How to Enable RDP on a Mac

To enable RDP on a Mac, you’ll need to install a third-party RDP server, because macOS doesn’t include one by default. Popular options include xrdp, FreeRDP, and ProRDP. Once installed, you’ll be able to connect to your Mac from a Windows PC or another RDP client using the Mac’s IP address or local hostname.

Does macOS have a built-in RDP server?

No. macOS doesn’t include an RDP server. There’s no switch in System Settings that turns one on, no hidden Terminal command, and nothing listening on port 3389 out of the box. If you point Remote Desktop Connection on your Windows PC at a Mac, it fails with a generic “can’t connect to the remote computer” error, because there’s nothing on the other end that speaks RDP.

What macOS does have is Screen Sharing, which is built on a different protocol called VNC. It’s free, it’s built in, and it technically works. But if you’re used to RDP on Windows, it’s going to feel like a big step backwards.

Can Windows Remote Desktop Connection connect to a Mac?

Not on its own. Windows’ Remote Desktop Connection (mstsc) and Windows App only speak RDP, and macOS doesn’t. To connect from Windows to a Mac, you’ll either need to use a different client on your Windows PC that supports VNC, or install a third-party RDP server on the Mac.

Is Apple Remote Desktop the same as RDP?

No, despite the name. Apple Remote Desktop is Apple’s paid app for managing groups of Macs, and its screen control is built on the same VNC technology as Screen Sharing. It has nothing to do with Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP), and Windows’ Remote Desktop clients can’t connect to it.

Isn’t Microsoft Remote Desktop available for Mac?

It is, but it goes the other way. Microsoft’s Windows App (previously called Microsoft Remote Desktop) is in the Mac App Store, but it’s an RDP client. It lets your Mac connect to a Windows PC. It doesn’t let anything connect to your Mac.

If you want the protocol-level details, I covered them in RDP vs. VNC. Here’s what those differences actually feel like when you’re the one using it.

VNC works by finding which rectangles of pixels changed on the screen, compressing them, and sending them to the client. That’s fine for a mostly still desktop. But the moment a lot of the screen changes at once, like dragging a window, scrolling a web page, or playing a video, the server has to capture, compare, and compress huge areas of the screen over and over again. The result is the lag and stuttering most people notice within seconds:

Standard VNC also makes the client ask for every single screen update, so the higher the latency of your network, the lower your frame rate gets.

Apple did add a High Performance mode to Screen Sharing in macOS Sonoma, but it only works between two Apple silicon Macs. From a Windows PC, or any standard VNC client, you’re on the regular, slower path.

VNC shows the Mac’s physical screen at the Mac’s own resolution. If your Mac has a 5K display and you connect from a 1080p laptop, you either scale everything down until the text is tiny or scroll around a desktop that doesn’t fit. With RDP, the client tells the server what size it wants, and resizing your window resizes the remote desktop with it.

The base VNC protocol doesn’t provide a lot of features, so every VNC project has added its own extensions for things like encryption, compression, and file transfer. Apple did too, with its own authentication scheme. The result is that many Windows VNC clients either can’t sign in to a Mac at all, or only work after you enable VNC viewers may control screen with password on the Mac. That falls back to legacy VNC authentication, where passwords are cut off at 8 characters.

Finding a good Windows VNC client is its own challenge. When I went looking, most were paid, required a cloud account, or hadn’t been updated in years. I wrote more about that in the post introducing ProRDP.

What else is missing from VNC?

Because VNC is built around a picture of the screen, a lot of everyday features aren’t part of the core protocol:

No audio. The base protocol has no way to send sound.
Basic clipboard. Plain text only, and only Latin-1 characters in the base spec. No images or files.
No file transfer or drive and printer sharing in the base protocol.
Keyboard quirks. VNC sends the character you meant rather than the key you pressed, which causes trouble with non-US keyboard layouts and shortcuts.
Encryption isn’t guaranteed. The base protocol doesn’t encrypt your session after sign-in, so security depends on which extensions both sides support, or on wrapping everything in a VPN or SSH tunnel yourself.

RDP has all of these built in. Audio, a full clipboard with files, and drive redirection are part of the protocol itself, and every session is encrypted with TLS by default.

Is RDP better than VNC?

In most scenarios, yes. RDP is designed for remote access from the ground up, with features like hardware-accelerated video streaming, dynamic resolution changes, full audio support, and robust encryption. This means you can connect to a remote machine and it feels like a local desktop, with smooth performance and full functionality.

But the question is, how can you get an RDP server running on your Mac?

How can I get an RDP server on my Mac?

Since macOS doesn’t include one, you need to install an RDP server yourself. That’s exactly why I built ProRDP: a native RDP server for macOS that uses the Mac’s hardware H.264 encoder, so Remote Desktop Connection, Windows App, FreeRDP, and other standard RDP clients can connect to your Mac just like they would to a Windows PC. Here’s the same kind of window drag over ProRDP:

It’s free for home and personal use, with no account, sign-up, or cloud service involved. Everything stays on your own network.

I wrote a full step-by-step guide covering installation, setup, and connecting from Windows, another Mac, or Linux: How to RDP into a Mac. Most people are connected within a few minutes.

Download for macOS

macOS 15 Sequoia or later · Apple silicon & Intel