If, like me, you regularly connect to other Macs on your local network via screen sharing, here's a super-fast way to do it: Use the open vnc://user@host URL format. This is so much faster than finding entries in Finder's sidebar or using the Screen Sharing application.
Have a number of Macs you connect to this way? Create one macro for each, consisting of a single Open URL action. Give them all the same hot key, and you've got a Conflict Palette-driven screen sharing connector...
In my case, I use Ctrl-Option-3 (on my keypad) to pop up the conflict palette, then a quick tap of 1 or 2 to open the connection I need to use.
The vnc:// URL can take one of two forms:
vnc://user@1.2.3.4
vnc://user@hostname
The user bit is optional, but if you include it, you'll only have to enter your password at the login prompt.
Replace 1.2.3.4 with the other Mac's IP address. To determine the hostname, if you want to use that method, look at the Screen Sharing application, where the hostname is visible in the list of connections (and by clicking the "i" at the right end of each entry in the list).
This is a ridiculously simple tip, but it saves me a few seconds (and a ton of mouse movement!) every time I need to connect to one of my local-but-remote Macs.
And, obviously, you can include other tweaks in your macro. Mine for remoting to work machines will fire up the VPN first (if it isn't already running) and then move and resize the resulting window (on the default opening size, I can't use the remote Dock because that area of the screen also triggers the local Dock).
Connect once, manually, to the remote device from your machine and check the "Remember password" button so you don't need to enter a password at all.
The 2014 Mac Minis make great file servers, and don't use much power when idling. Earlier silver unibody models might be suitable too, but I wouldn't look at earlier ranges (unless you need Firewire!).
When no display or display dongle is attached to the Mini, the maximum display resolution will still be high enough for remote admin – and if you need the highest resolutions for your tasks, I wonder if that might suggest that your needs might be better served (er, no pun intended) by a less ancient computer.
That's what I had found (with 1024 x 768 also being offered), but I have just taken another look at the Displays control panel and if you enable "show all resolutions", the highest resolution is 1920 x 1080!
I can't remember what OS that came in with -- it's available in 10.15 but not eg 10.11. But hopefully @cherry is looking to run so old an OS!
More important for me is that it doesn't persist across restarts and drops back to 1280x1024. I'm sure that's a solvable problem but since, as you say above, remote admin doesn't need the higher resolution I've never bothered.
Yes, definitely an option (you can even do it with the macro already in place, as the same checkbox appears each time). I've personally chose to leave the password unsaved, just because it helps me transition mentally from working on my main Mac to working on the remote Macs.
I’m looking for used M1 base model - that 8Gb, 256Gb ones and will probably get a larger external SSD. This will be my file server, storage, additional backup but also, as a test env as I want to learn some system admin skills.
If you can, get one with more Unified Memory. That way you can run a VM on there as your test environment, with a lot lower risk of fubaring the other services while playing around. While 8GB is enough to do virtualisation, more is better if you also want to do other things.
Or you could, of course, use VMs on your main machine to hone your SysAd skills and keep the Mini as a dedicated server.
If you want to try VMs and don't need all the features of Parallels or Fusion (and note that Fusion Pro is now free for personal use, though registration is required) then Orka Desktop is worth a look.
That would depend on if it's plugged in, connected via Ethernet, and has "wake for network activity" enabled. If so, then possibly? I've never actually tested that myself.
But even if screen sharing won't wake it, as long as it's on power and Ethernet and has the wake feature enabled, you could send a wake on LAN packet first, then screen share. Again, in theory, as I haven't done anything like that in a very long time.
Wake is on, it's connected to the net, so hopefully. I'll experiment when I'm free to test it out.
No ideas as to how to send a wake on LAN packet though.
I could, but because it's personalized for my IPs, to post it I'd have to change those, and by changing those, the macro isn't usable without editing anyway. But here's how it's set up.
In one of my "global" macro groups, I have two macros, each with the same hot key:
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