Use kickstart to set Apple Remote Desktop preferences. For example, you can install, uninstall, activate, set up, and restart Apple Remote Desktop components.
Learn how to control a remote Mac with Screen Sharing with the kickstart command-line utility in macOS Mojave 10.14 and later.
Get started
You can find the kickstart tool at: /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Resources/kickstart
Type the commands in this article as one line of text. If the text wraps as you enter it, that's fine. Don’t press the Return key until you’ve entered the entire command.
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For more information about the kickstart command, use the -help flag:
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Sample commands
The commands in this article work with Apple Remote Desktop 3.2 and later.
Here are commands that you can use:
Restart the ARD Agent and helper:
Turn on Remote Desktop Sharing, allow access for all users, and enable the menu extra:
Turn on Remote Desktop Sharing, allow access for specified users: You must use the -configure, -access, and -privs options in a separate command to specify the set of users and their access privileges. For example, this command is for users with the short names 'teacher' and “student.' It gives them access to observe (but not control) the computer, and to send text messages: Unlike other kickstart options, you can’t combine the allowAccessFor options with other kickstart options. You must use it as in the last two samples above. You might have to call kickstart more than once to finish a computer’s setup.
Remove access privileges for specified users ('student' in this example):
Disable ARD Agent and remove access privileges for all users:
Apple Remote Desktop gives you the complete tools you need to control all the Mac computers in your network right from your own computer. You can even save task settings as templates and apply them in the future, or use one of more than 30 included sample scripts.
Save yourself the legwork. Apple Remote Desktop gives you more than a dozen commands you can use to control your remote systems easily. You can shut down all systems simultaneously, put to sleep, wake up, or restart any or all computers—all without leaving your desk.
You also have the ability to remotely designate the startup disk for your client Mac computers. Set any number of computers to start up from a NetBoot image or their local hard drives. You’ll find this to be an indispensable feature if you are in charge of a computer lab or cluster-computing environment where startup disks are often changed.
And for minimum disruption, you have the ability to schedule any of your admin tasks. All you have to do is save the settings for future deployment and Apple Remote Desktop will initiate the process at the scheduled time.
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Apple Remote Desktop also gives you the power to execute UNIX shell scripts or commands on your remote client systems. You can view either a summary or the complete results of the command’s output. This lets you script many standard functions built into UNIX systems or third-party tools. You can also take advantage of the command-line interfaces included in OS X.
These prepopulated UNIX commands are available via the Send UNIX Task Template: