Having Multiple Entries for the Same PC in Microsoft Remote Desktop Application on Apple macOS

Introduction

In a previous blog post, Using the Microsoft Remote Desktop Application on Apple macOS, I showed how easy it was to remote control a Windows computer from your Mac.

One question I get asked is “Can I have multiple entries for the same computer?” The answer is yes!

This, of course, leads to another question, “Why would you want to?”

Reasons for Multiple Entries

There are a number of valid reasons for wanting multiple entries in Remote Desktop to the same computer. Let’s cover a couple by using examples.

First, let’s say you have a Windows 10 computer in the family room where your child plays games and does school work. Wisely you have setup their account as a “standard user”.

You have an account as well, as an administrator, to handle administrative tasks such as installing software, making sure updates are being processed and the like.

You could setup entries in Microsoft Remote Desktop, one for each user that logs into the computer. This allows you to have one entry to login as yourself, and a second to login using your offspring’s ID.

Now when your child comes to ask you to install the latest updates to Minecraft on the family computer, you can simply remote to it from your Mac using their ID, and install the updates providing your admin user ID and password. You’ll also have the entry to login as yourself, so you can apply updates and do maintenance.

For the second reason, you may wish to access your remote PC with different sets of option. In the blog post I mentioned earlier, I set it up to use all the monitors on my Mac.

Every so often though, I want to have my remote Windows computer running in a window. This allows me to see something on my remote machine, while still having my macOS desktop available.

One example, in my previous post I showed how to configure Windows to allow for remote access. I did so by having the Windows machine in a window on my Mac on one monitor, while creating the post in Safari on my macBook on a second monitor. This let me have them side by side, making it easy to create the instructions.

Rather than having to change the settings each time, I have two entries for my main Windows computer. The first, which you saw created in the first blog post in this series, opens the Windows machine using all monitors. The second opens it up in just a window.

Those are just two reasons, I’m sure you’ll be able to come up with many more.

Adding a Second Entry for the Windows PC

First, I’m going to assume you’ve already read my first article, Using the Microsoft Remote Desktop Application on Apple macOS. If you haven’t, please take a moment now to do so.

With Microsoft Remote Desktop open on your Mac, click the + button at the top, then pick Add PC in the drop down.

Note that for security reasons, in the screen shots I’ve replaced with the actual name of my computer with <name>.

Start with the name of the computer in the PC name, and pick the user account to login in as, or leave it as “Ask when required“.

Now we want to use the Friendly name to indicate not just the computer name, but also how this is used. For this example I’m going to have my remote machine display in a window, so I’ve entered <name> in a Window.

Next we’ll need to configure it to show up in a window, so click on the Display tab.

Here I will uncheck the default of Start session in a full screen, then check on Fit session to window.

Then, at the bottom I checked on Update the session resolution on resize. This way when I resize the window on my Mac, it will resize the computer I’m remoting into so the desktop will fit the window.

You can change the Devices & Audio and Folders if you wish. Since I’ve already covered those in the first article I’ll just click on the Add button.

Update the Existing Connection

Before we open the new connection, we should update the friendly name of the existing one to make it clear what the difference is. To do so, click on the pencil icon in the upper right of the connection created in the first article.

Go to the Friendly name field, and enter the name of the computer followed by (for this situation) All Monitors, then click Save.

Below you can see it now reads <name> All Monitors, and beside it the new entry we just added for <name> in a Window.

It’s now very easy to tell the difference in the two connections.

Launching the New Connection

Let’s now launch the new connection by double clicking on it.

Here you can see a new window appears on my Mac, showing my Windows desktop. (Note that you can see a bigger version of any of the images in my blog posts by double clicking on it).

You can see the window with the full Windows 10 desktop, including the Windows task bar. You can also see the macOS toolbar across the bottom, as well as the Mac menu bar at the top.

You can also resize the window. If you checked the Update the session resolution on resize option, the resizing the window will also resize the Windows desktop as you see below.

You can see my Windows 10 desktop now fits nicely into my resized window.

Please note you can only have one connection to a computer active at a time. If I am in the windowed version of my connection, then go back to the Microsoft Remote Desktop connection window and double click on the <name> All Monitors, it will disconnect the <name> in a Window session then launch the all monitors version.

Any time you launch a connection, it will disconnect any existing connection, if there is one, in favor of the newly launched one.

Conclusion

In this article we showed how to create multiple connections to the same computer in the Microsoft Remote Desktop application on macOS. This works with Big Sur as well as previous versions of macOS.

We also covered various reasons why you might wish to create multiple connections within Remote Desktop.

Armed with this information you can now create multiple connections to the same computer to fit the ways in which you want to use the remote computer.