Editor: Geek material warning 😛

This is nothing new, but I thought I’d just put it here just in case someone else needs it (if the original source is taken down), or, more often than not, I forget how to do it.

Scenario
I have 2 accounts on my Mac that I use every now and then – my “usual”, non-geek user account; and my geeky development user account. This is just because it is easier for me to segregate my applications and also for testing purposes. Switching between 2 user accounts, even with “fast user switching”, is not really that fast, since we have to effectively log into the other account. So I thought it would be nice if I could remote into my development user account.

Preparation work (destination)
On the geeky development user account, I have to enable Remote Login and Remote Management in System Preferences > Sharing; and under Remote Management, I just enable whatever access that I’d need as a “remote user”. When this is done, I run Terminal and key in the following command:

ssh -NL 5901:localhost:5900 localhost

What this effectively does is that it is allowing my development user account to listen to port 5901 for an incoming connection request. Since, effectively, BOTH my non-geeky user account and my development user account are potentially listening to the same port (depending on what you do [on/to] your Mac), it is important to segregate the ports. In addition, connecting to the default port using the client app may result in an error anyway – since I may technically be connecting from my non-geeky user account to my… non-geeky user account.

Connecting from the client
This is probably the easiest step of the lot. Apple would recommend that you purchase the USD79.99 Apple Remote Desktop. I nearly choked on my longan (longan, not Logan, not Wolverine). Thankfully, there is a “Screen Sharing” app in “/System/Library/CoreServices/Applications”. You should be able to launch this easily with Spotlight Search.

When you launch the Screen Sharing app, you will be prompted for your destination host. Here, I key in (and you should probably, too):

localhost:5901

When you then click on Connect, you will be prompted for your Name and Password. For myself, I log in using my geeky user account name with my geeky account password. It would then prompt you on “How would you like to connect?”.

Here’s where you choose “Log in as yourself: [Name]”. Whatever you do, do NOT choose to “Share the display”. You would not want to know the consequences. If you do, please save your work first. Another hint is that, the power button will be your friend should you choose to… share the display.

Conclusion
This is a pretty straight forward way of working between 2 user accounts using just 1 screen. In fact, if you have a second screen, you can always drag the Screen Sharing app into full screen onto the 2nd display. There are *many* ways of achieving what I am trying to do, but to each her own 🙂 I am still at a stage where I am exploring ways of segregating my work without running additional software, such as Virtual Machines and all… because my Mac would start sounding like an Airbus A350. The A380 is now passé.

Source
http://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/151151/can-i-remote-desktop-to-another-user-on-the-same-machine (as accessed on 20/03/2017)