You may not want to control a computer, but merely monitor what is on its screen. Observing a remote computer is similar to controlling one, except your mouse movements and keyboard input are not sent to the remote computer. Apple Remote Desktop client computers can be observed on any administrator computer that has the "Observe" permission set. See Apple Remote Desktop Administrator Access for more information about Apple Remote Desktop permissions.

Remote Desktop allows you to observe multiple clients on the same screen, cycling through the list of observed computers. This allows you to monitor many screens without having to select each one individually.

Dealing With Many Client Screens

When observing a single client, you can see the client window at full size, or scaled it to fit the observe window. To switch between the full size and fitting to the window, click the Fit to Window button.

If you're observing more clients than you've chosen to fit on one screen, you can cycle through multiple pages by clicking the Previous or Next button.

Cycle Pages:  Use these buttons to manually switch to the previous or next page of screens.

Getting More Information on Observed Clients

There is a computer information area beneath each of the observed desktops. It's automatically disabled when the administrator is viewing more computers than the computer information area is able to show effectively (a threshhold of about 220 pixels across). This could happen if:

• the initial selection of computers is too great for the window size
• the observe window is resized, shrinking the information beneath the threshold
• the setting for the number of viewed machines is changed

The computer information area is reenabled when the sizes are returned to more than the image size threshhold.

See:

• Changing Observe Settings While Observing
• Shortcuts in the Multiple Screen Observe Window
• Observing a Single Computer
• Observing Multiple Computers
• Changing Screen Titles While Observing
• Viewing a User's Account Picture While Observing
• Viewing a Computer's System Status While at the Observe Window