How to control a Mac mini from Windows: Sunshine and Moonlight, a month in

🖥️ The problem: a Mac with no screen and a PC on the couch

🖥️ This guide is part of our Mac mini series. For the basics of running one with no monitor, start with how to run a Mac mini headless.

Our Mac mini sits on a shelf with no monitor, no keyboard and no mouse. It runs around the clock. The computer we actually sit at is a Windows Surface. That combination is more common than you would think, because a Mac mini makes a good always-on home machine, and plenty of households have a Windows laptop already.

The trouble is that the usual answer for reaching a headless Mac assumes you own a second Mac. Apple’s Screen Sharing app is part of macOS, and there is no Windows version. Our headless setup guide covers it well, but only if you are coming from a Mac.

This guide is the Windows answer we have used every day for about a month: Sunshine on the Mac, Moonlight on the Surface. It is not perfect. Of the options we found, it is the best.

What Sunshine and Moonlight are

Sunshine is a free, open-source streaming host made by LizardByte. You install it on the computer you want to control. It captures the screen, compresses it with the computer’s hardware video encoder, and sends it over the network. Moonlight is the free client you install on the computer you sit at. It shows the stream and sends your keyboard and mouse back.

Both come from game streaming. That is why they feel different from classic remote-desktop tools: the picture is a proper video stream, it is smooth, and it reacts quickly. Sunshine began on Windows and Linux, but it runs on macOS too, and that is the part that makes it useful here.

On our Mac mini, with the default settings, Sunshine encodes the stream with the Mac’s built-in video encoder and captures the Mac’s system audio. We have not changed a single setting in its configuration file.

What you need

• A Mac mini (or any Mac) on your home network. Ours is an M4 Pro, but nothing here needs a Pro chip: the hardware video encoder is in every Apple silicon Mac.
• An HDMI dummy plug if the Mac has no monitor. More on that below.
• A Windows PC on the same network. Ours is a Surface.
• About half an hour, with a monitor on the Mac for the first part. Setting up permissions without a screen is much harder than with one.

Step 1: Install Sunshine on the Mac

Download Sunshine for macOS from the official LizardByte releases and install it like any other app. Start it once.

Sunshine runs in the background and is configured through a web page on the Mac itself. On first launch you open that page in a browser on the Mac, create a username and password for the web interface, and land on its dashboard. Keep those credentials somewhere safe; they protect the settings, not the stream.

Then set Sunshine to start automatically when you log in. On a headless Mac that should never sleep, this matters, because nobody is there to start it after an update or a restart.

Step 2: Grant the macOS permissions

This is the step that decides whether it works. macOS protects the screen, audio and input, and Sunshine needs all three.

• Screen and system audio recording. Without it, Sunshine streams a black or empty picture. macOS asks the first time a stream starts, and you can also grant it in System Settings under Privacy & Security.
• Accessibility. Without it, the stream shows up but your mouse and keyboard do nothing on the Mac. It is in the same part of System Settings.

If something does not work later, check these two lists first. After a major macOS update, it is worth checking that the permissions survived.

Step 3: Attach a dummy plug

A Mac mini with no monitor does not know what resolution to draw its desktop at, and it falls back to a small default. Sunshine streams whatever the Mac draws, so you would be looking at a cramped, blurry desktop.

An HDMI dummy plug fixes that. It is a small adapter that tells the Mac a monitor is connected, so macOS renders a real desktop. Ours is this UGREEN 4K plug, and it has been in the HDMI port since the day the monitor came off. Our headless guide explains the effect on remote sessions in more detail.

The plug handles 4K without trouble. We run ours at a lower resolution on purpose, for readability (see step 5).

Step 4: Install Moonlight on Windows and pair

Install Moonlight on the Windows PC. If both computers are on the same network, the Mac usually shows up in Moonlight on its own. If not, add it by its local IP address.

Click the Mac, and Moonlight shows a four-digit PIN. Enter that PIN in the Sunshine web page on the Mac. From then on, the two trust each other, and connecting is one click.

Sunshine offers two apps to start by default: Desktop and Steam Big Picture. For controlling the Mac, Desktop is the one you want.

Step 5: Make text readable

A Mac desktop streamed to a laptop screen can look tiny. We use BetterDisplay, a display utility for macOS, to lower the resolution of the streamed screen. That makes the interface and the text bigger and much easier to read on the Surface.

Some black bars remain. The Surface has a 3:2 screen and the Mac’s desktop does not match it exactly, so Moonlight letterboxes the picture. It does not bother us enough to chase it further.

What a month of daily use looks like

We have used this every day for about a month. Sunshine’s log shows around 70 sessions in that time, some of them several hours long. In practice:

It is stable and reliable. Connecting is one click, the stream comes up within a second or two, and sessions run for hours without dropping. Over the whole month the log shows one hang, which a restart of Sunshine fixed.

It is very good for terminal work. Most of our time on the Mac is spent in a terminal. Text stays sharp, typing feels immediate, and scrolling through long output is smooth. For that job it fits well.

The bandwidth is moderate. On our home network Moonlight negotiated a stream of around 44 megabits per second. That is a lot for a terminal, but irrelevant on a home network, and it is what keeps the picture crisp.

The mouse pointer disappears. This is the one real flaw. As soon as you type something, the pointer vanishes from the stream, and it is genuinely annoying the first few times. The fix we use: move the mouse to the bottom edge of the screen, and the pointer comes back. We have not found a setting that stops it from happening.

The log also shows occasional encoder warnings about missing keyframes. If you notice short stutters, that may be the reason. We have not seen it cause real problems.

Sunshine against the alternatives

To be fair to the other options:

• macOS Screen Sharing from a Windows VNC viewer. macOS Screen Sharing speaks VNC, so a VNC viewer on Windows can connect to it. It works, but it is a classic remote-desktop experience, not a video stream.
• Commercial remote-desktop tools. Several exist, with apps for both platforms. They add an account and often a subscription, and some route your session through their servers.
• SSH. If all you need is a terminal, an SSH client on Windows is the lightest option and needs no streaming at all. We use it too, but sometimes you need the desktop.

For a graphical desktop with the smoothness of a local screen, Sunshine and Moonlight is the best combination we found.

What about outside the home network?

We only use this setup at home, so we cannot speak from experience about streaming from elsewhere. If you want to, the one rule we would follow is: do not open Sunshine’s ports on your router to the internet. A private network tool such as a mesh VPN keeps the Mac reachable only from your own devices. Test it before you rely on it while traveling.

Which Mac mini for this

Any Apple silicon Mac mini handles the streaming itself, because the work is done by the hardware video encoder, not the processor. Choose by what else the Mac will do.

• For a home server, a media library or office work, the current base Mac mini is plenty.
• If the Mac also runs heavy work, the Mac mini with the M5 Pro is the one to get. Ours runs a local AI model next to everything else, which we describe in our Claude Code and local LLM setup.

For memory and storage, see our Mac mini RAM and storage guide, and for the bits worth plugging in, the accessories guide.

Can I use Apple Screen Sharing from a Windows PC?

Apple’s Screen Sharing app only exists on macOS. macOS Screen Sharing speaks the VNC protocol, so a VNC viewer on Windows can connect to it, but it is not the streaming-grade experience Sunshine and Moonlight give you. We use Sunshine and Moonlight.

Is Sunshine free?

Yes. Sunshine is free and open source, made by LizardByte. Moonlight, the client you install on Windows, is free and open source as well.

Does Sunshine work on a Mac?

Yes. Sunshine started out as a Windows game-streaming host, but it runs on macOS too. On our Mac mini it encodes the screen with the Mac’s hardware video encoder and captures system audio, with the default settings.

Do I need an HDMI dummy plug for Sunshine on a Mac mini?

On a Mac mini with no monitor, yes. Without a display attached, macOS falls back to a small default resolution, and that is what you would stream. A dummy plug pretends to be a monitor, so the Mac renders a proper desktop. Our headless guide explains it in detail.

Why does the mouse pointer disappear in Moonlight?

In our setup it vanishes as soon as you start typing. Moving the mouse to the bottom edge of the screen brings it back. We have not found a setting that stops it. It is the biggest annoyance of the setup, but once you know the trick it costs a second.

Is Sunshine good for terminal and office work, or only for games?

It works well for both. We use it mostly for terminal work on a headless Mac mini, and it has been stable over about 70 sessions in a month. Lowering the streamed resolution makes text bigger and easier to read on a laptop screen.

Can I use Sunshine and Moonlight outside my home network?

It is possible, but we only use it inside the home network, so we cannot speak from experience. If you do want remote access, do not open Sunshine’s ports on your router. A private network tool such as a mesh VPN is the safer route.

The stream is black or my keyboard does nothing. What should I check?

Check the two macOS permissions first. Without Screen and system audio recording, Sunshine streams a black or empty picture. Without Accessibility, the stream appears but the mouse and keyboard do nothing on the Mac. Both are in System Settings under Privacy and Security, and after a major macOS update it is worth confirming they survived.