Remote desktop tools send the Mac’s screen, keyboard and mouse to you. None of the common ones send your microphone to a Mac: there is no microphone passthrough to a Mac host. To talk in a meeting that runs on the remote Mac, keep your remote desktop tool (Parsec, AnyDesk, TeamViewer, Screen Sharing, Chrome Remote Desktop or another) for the screen and run Remote Visio beside it: a browser extension on the Mac and a web page on the device in front of you, which becomes the microphone, camera and speaker of that Mac for meetings held in its browser.
Why your microphone does not reach the Mac
Microphone redirection exists, but mostly in one direction. Microsoft’s Remote Desktop (RDP) redirects your microphone when the far end is a Windows PC. When the far end is a Mac, the usual tools stop at the screen. This is how they behave when the controlled computer is a Mac, as tested by Remote Visio’s author:
| Tool | Screen and input | Your microphone |
|---|---|---|
| TeamViewer | Yes | No, it picks up the Mac’s own microphone instead |
| AnyDesk | Yes | No |
| Parsec | Yes | No |
| RustDesk | Yes | No |
| Jump Desktop | Yes | No |
| ToDesk | Yes | No: it has microphone mapping, but the controlled end must be Windows |
| macOS Screen Sharing | Yes | No |
| Microsoft RDP (far end is Windows) | Yes | Yes, built in, and it stops at Windows |
So you open Google Meet on the remote Mac, you can see everyone, and nobody can hear you.
What Remote Visio does
Remote Visio has one part on the Mac and none to install on your side:
- The Remote Visio browser extension, for Chrome, Edge, Brave, Arc and other Chromium browsers on the Mac, gives web pages there three more devices: Remote Visio Microphone, Remote Visio Speaker and Remote Visio Camera. A meeting picks them like any other device.
- The sender page at
remotevisio.com/send, which you open in any browser on the device in front of you (a laptop, a phone, a tablet). It sends your microphone and camera to the extension over an encrypted peer-to-peer WebRTC connection, and plays the meeting’s sound back to you.
The two find each other through Remote Visio’s relay, a small service that passes only the encrypted connection setup, never your audio or video. You pair the device with the Mac once; from then on, only your paired devices can connect.
What you need
- The remote Mac, with a Chromium browser (Chrome, Edge, Brave, Arc, Vivaldi or Opera, version 116 or later) where your meetings run, and the Remote Visio extension in it. A Windows, Linux or ChromeOS computer with Chrome, Edge or Brave works the same way, though Remote Visio is built and tested on macOS.
- A browser with a microphone on the device in front of you.
- Internet on both sides. The audio and video then go directly between the two devices.
- Your usual remote desktop tool, for the screen.
Set it up
- 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.
- 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/sendasks 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. - 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.
- 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.
On the sender page, each device shows a status: green when it gets through and a meeting uses it, amber while it is on its way, red with what to fix.
Limits to know first
- Web meetings only. The three devices exist in web pages of a Chromium browser on the Mac. The Zoom, Teams and FaceTime apps, macOS dictation, Safari and Firefox cannot see them. Join from the browser instead: see Join Zoom and Teams meetings from the browser.
- A direct path is needed for the audio. The relay only sets the connection up; the audio and video go between your devices directly. Two devices that cannot reach each other at all, as behind some corporate firewalls, do not connect yet: there is no TURN relay.
- Latency is about a phone call’s. Fine for talking and meetings, not for monitoring yourself while recording music.
A Mac mini at home, or a Mac in a rack
The setup is the same for any Mac you reach from far away, whether it sits in another room, at the office or in a rack. What matters is that it runs a Chromium browser for the meetings, that the browser stays open, and that both sides have internet. If the Mac is in the same room as an iPhone, you probably do not need Remote Visio: Apple’s Continuity Microphone already does that.
Ready to try it? Add the extension on the Mac, then open remotevisio.com/send on your device.