Member Avatar for phorce

Hello,

I am trying to remotely connect to my mac that is at home. It appears when I am on my network, I can ssh into it without any problems whatsoever.

If I try and ssh outside of my network it displays an error saying "Connection failed" Is there a way to remotely access my machine (That is always left on)?

Thank you :)

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by Netcode

Dani AI

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Short summary and practical options that avoid rehashing earlier suggestions by , and .

If the goal is reliable, secure remote access without fiddling with your home router, use a mesh VPN/overlay or a tunneling relay. Tailscale and ZeroTier create a secure virtual LAN across devices (no inbound ports on your router needed): install the client on the Mac, authenticate, then connect to the machine using the assigned private address or MagicDNS name. (Tailscale: https://tailscale.com/; ZeroTier: https://www.zerotier.com/.)

If you already have a small VPS or want a short-term workaround, create a reverse SSH tunnel from the Mac to the VPS and connect via that public host. Example (run on the Mac):

ssh -R 2222:localhost:22 user@your-vps.example.com -N

From the remote client:

ssh -p 2222 user@your-vps.example.com

Alternatively, services like ngrok can expose a TCP tunnel from a public endpoint to your Mac for quick remote access (https://ngrok.com/).

Quick security and diagnostics checklist

  • Use key-based SSH authentication and a passphrase; disable password auth and root login in sshd_config.
  • Keep macOS patched and enable the built-in firewall.
  • From a remote machine use ssh -v for verbose debug output to see where the handshake fails.
  • Compare your router WAN IP to an external IP (curl ifconfig.me) to detect carrier NAT (CGNAT) — if present, inbound connections from the Internet will fail unless you use a relay/tunnel.
  • Log and inspect macOS Console and sshd logs when troubleshooting.

These approaches let you avoid exposing an arbitrary public port on the home network while keeping access secure and manageable.

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Member Avatar for can_surmeli

Hey phorce.

First off. The SSH problem is because of that your home Mac is not configured for outside SSH access. If you do so you can remotely access but I won't recommend since you will have a lot of trouble with security even though Macs are safe to use.

Anyway. If you want remote access I say give Teamviewer a shot. It's a remote desktop access app and it's very useful. When you have Teamvier running on your home Mac, you can access it from anywhere in the world.

Good luck.

Edited by can_surmeli because: n/a
Member Avatar for nmaillet

In addition to what can_surmeli said, you router will probably block incoming requests from outside the network. Have you enabled port forwarding to your Mac?

Member Avatar for Netcode

Well, you can connect when both PC's are on the same network because there is no conflict as it recognizes the network but you definitely cannot connect when you exist on another network because you computer at home wont be seen

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