👩🏼‍💻 macOS — RDP to a Windows Machine 💻

How to connect from Mac to a Windows machine

How do you connect from macOS to a Windows machine?

Just RDP!

Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) is a proprietary protocol developed by Microsoft, which provides a user with a graphical interface to connect to another computer over a network connection. The user employs RDP client software for this purpose, while the other computer must run RDP server software.

So how can I RDP from macOS? Let’s see… 🤔

#3 — Parallels Client

Parallels Client

Pros

• It is Free
• Easy to manage predefined connections

Cons

• Very unstable and keep disconnecting when I use it

#2 — Microsoft Remote Desktop 10

Microsoft Remote Desktop 10

Pros

• Developed by Microsoft
• It is Free

Cons

• It doesn’t seem to do auto-login even when storing the credentials

#1 — FreeRDP

FreeRDP

Pros

• It is Free
• Opensource
• Faster and lighter than the rest
• Can do autologin
• Fully configurable

Cons

• Command-line arguments
• You need to know how to use it

FreeRDP is by far my favorite! Let’s see how to use it… 🧐

Installing

brew install freerdp

Please review the documentation.

Please note: homebrew is a prerequisite

Using

Once installed, simply execute from your terminal shell:

xfreerdp /u:ido.montekyo@domain /p:mypass /v:10.10.20.20 /cert-ignore /auto-reconnect-max-retries:0 /smart-sizing +clipboard /home-drive

Now, let’s go over the command-line arguments I am using:

/u:ido.montekyo@domain        --> User name @ domain
/p:mypass                     --> Your password
/v:10.10.20.20                --> Remote IP address or Hostname
/cert-ignore                  --> Ignore certificate issues
/auto-reconnect-max-retries:0 --> Auto Reconnect if needed
/smart-sizing                 --> Enable window resize
+clipboard                    --> Share the clipboard (copy-paste)
/home-drive                   --> Share/Expose my home directory

So I am able to:

• Auto-login. No need to enter my credentials each time I log in
• Share the clipboard and copy from Windows and paste to in macOS
• Share my home directory with Windows and copy files from and to

These are extremely useful features! Thank you FreeRDP 👏🏻

Final Thoughts

I tried only “Free” products. If any software provider wants to give me some of his/her commercial product for a test run, just gimme a shout 😊