AnyDesk, TeamViewer and Screen Sharing: talk in a meeting on the remote Mac

AnyDesk, TeamViewer and macOS Screen Sharing all let you control a Mac from somewhere else. None of them sends your microphone to that Mac, so a meeting you join there cannot hear you. The fix is the same for all three, and for other remote desktop tools such as Chrome Remote Desktop: keep the tool for the screen, and let Remote Visio carry your microphone, camera and the meeting’s sound.

Tool by tool

These notes describe each tool’s behaviour when the controlled computer is a Mac, as tested by Remote Visio’s author. Tools change; if yours has added microphone forwarding to Macs, you may not need anything else.

AnyDesk

AnyDesk forwards the Mac’s screen and your keyboard and mouse. Your microphone does not reach the Mac’s apps. Meetings on the Mac see only the Mac’s own microphones, if it has any.

TeamViewer

TeamViewer does not send your microphone to a Mac either: it picks up the Mac’s own microphone instead. That is the room the Mac stands in, not you. If that room is an office, the meeting hears the office.

macOS Screen Sharing

Apple’s Screen Sharing gives you the Mac’s screen and control of it. It has no setting that turns your microphone into a microphone of the remote Mac.

Other tools

The same applies to RustDesk, Jump Desktop and Parsec (Parsec guide), and ToDesk maps the microphone only when the controlled computer runs Windows. Remote Visio does not depend on your remote tool, so it works the same next to Chrome Remote Desktop or any other.

The common fix

Remote Visio runs in a browser on the Mac (an extension) and in a browser on your side (a web page). It gives web meetings on the Mac three devices, Remote Visio Microphone, Remote Visio Speaker and Remote Visio Camera, fed by the device in front of you over an encrypted peer-to-peer WebRTC connection.

1. Add the extension on the Mac. Through your remote desktop, open the extension’s Chrome Web Store page in Chrome, Edge, Brave or Arc on the Mac and click Add to Chrome (Get in Edge), then pin it so its button stays in the toolbar. Nothing is installed outside the browser, and no administrator is needed.
2. Pair the device in front of you. Click the extension’s button, then Pair a device: it shows a QR code and a link, good for 10 minutes. Scan the code with your phone, or open the link on your laptop. The sender page at remotevisio.com/send asks you to confirm and shows a 6-digit number: type it into the approval window that opened on the Mac and click Allow. The page then names the Mac and offers Send to this computer.
3. Press Start and pick the devices. Press Start on your device and allow its microphone, and the camera if you want to send video. In the meeting’s settings on the Mac, choose Remote Visio Microphone, Remote Visio Speaker and Remote Visio Camera, then click Allow when the extension asks whether the site may use them. It asks once per site.
4. Turn off audio in your remote desktop tool. Remote Visio now carries the meeting’s sound back to you. If the remote tool still forwards sound, you hear the meeting twice.

The room around the Mac

With TeamViewer in particular, the Mac’s own microphone has been the meeting’s input until now. Once Remote Visio Microphone is selected, the meeting hears you instead, and the room stays out of it. A page that remembered one of the Mac’s own microphones by name keeps using that one until you pick Remote Visio’s in its settings, so check the meeting’s audio settings once.

Limits

• The microphone and the speaker work in web pages of a Chromium browser on the Mac: Chrome, Edge, Brave, Arc, Vivaldi, Opera. The Zoom, Teams and FaceTime apps, Safari and Firefox do not see them. Join from the browser.
• Only devices you paired can connect, and a paired device hears what meetings play into Remote Visio Speaker: pair the devices you trust, and remove one from the extension’s button when you no longer use it.
• An iPhone in the same room as the Mac does not need any of this: Apple’s Continuity Microphone is free.

If something does not work

• Nobody hears you: the sender page’s microphone status should be green and say a page on the remote computer uses it. If it is amber with “no meeting uses Remote Visio Microphone yet”, pick it in the meeting’s audio settings.
• You hear yourself, or the meeting twice: the remote tool still forwards sound. Turn it off there. See Fix echo and double audio.
• The sender page is waiting for the computer: the Mac’s browser, with the extension, is not running. Open it through your remote session.

Add the extension on the Mac, or read how it works.