How to (Remotely) Help Your Family Members With Their New Technologies
Holiday gifts mean new technology for everyone, and new technology for everyone means a new tech support headache! You know your friends and family will have problems with their devices and gadgets; It’s one thing to be able to help them personally, but if you live far away, servicing these issues remotely can be a problem. Here are some tips to make life easier for both you and those you are trying to help.
Discuss them via video call
Please, if possible, do not rely on a regular phone call to help your friends and family with a technical problem. It might be natural for someone to call you and ask a question about the device, but only his voice as he works on a problem can quickly turn into a problem in and of itself.
Do not misunderstand me; Many technical issues can be resolved over the phone. But often it will be much faster for you to understand what is going on if you see what you are working with. Of course, you can ask your dad, “Is there a port on the back that says HDMI 1? I don’t know, it should be close to all the other ports … ” Or you could ask him to point his iPhone at the back of the TV and show him which port is which.
If your family has questions about their new smart TV, speaker setup, smartwatch, or similar, it is probably easiest to help them with a video call. Often times, a FaceTime or other smartphone video call will be the easiest way to do this as they can easily move the camera to show you what they are looking at.
Ask them to share their screen
Video calling is a great resource for technical support. But since you are making video calls from smartphones, tablets, and computers, this method may not work if the technical issue relates to one of these three devices. Instead of asking your friend to point their smartphone at their computer (or vice versa), you can ask them to just share their screen.
Screen sharing used to be more difficult than it is today, but thanks to the proliferation of video conferencing applications, this feature is now easily accessible from almost all modern devices. Your friend can share his laptop screen with your phone, his phone screen with your tablet, and his tablet screen with your laptop. You also have several options for working, depending on the device in question.
For Apple users, FaceTime’s new SharePlay might be the best solution. The new feature lets you share your screen with other FaceTime participants if you’re using iOS 15, iPadOS 15, or macOS Monterey. If your friend is having problems with their iPhone, iPad, or Mac, they can connect to a FaceTime call, share their screen, and you can help them solve their problem. You can learn more about how to use this feature from our complete guide here .
Whether your friend is using Apple, Android, or Windows, there are other screen sharing solutions as well. Popular apps like Zoom, Teams, and Skype have this feature built in; all you have to do is make sure they have downloaded and configured the appropriate app (same on your side) and then initiate screen sharing.
Zoom has a very obvious “Share Screen” option in the hangout window; ask them to click on it, then click Desktop and Done. Teams and Skype have a similar function; ask them to click the arrow box, then Desktop, Share, or Start Sharing. From here it is much easier to give directions.
Use a remote access app
Sometimes the easiest solution is to do it yourself. Yes, yes, teach a person to fish and all that, but no one will learn to fish if a tech support session turns into a frustration.
If you’re up to the initial challenge, gaining remote access to your friend’s device can make it much easier for you to get technical assistance. Of course, this involves creating remote access remotely. You will need to use one of the above methods to configure and install the software, and a family member or friend will need to follow your instructions. Good luck!
Unfortunately, remote access is mostly only possible on a Mac or PC. For iPhone and Android, most of the “remote access” solutions you’ll find are actually glorified screen sharing tools. Even the app we are going to recommend, although available for mobile devices, only offers screen mirroring for direct use on those devices.
There are many ways to access your Mac or PC remotely, but the easiest one is through an application like TeamViewer. TeamViewer reduces remote access to a unique ID and password; your friend will provide you with this information, and in a few seconds you will have access to his entire computer from your computer, smartphone or tablet.
You should definitely do a screen sharing session when setting up this app on your friend’s computer as it can be difficult to explain over the phone.
How to use TeamViewer to access your computer remotely
Ask a friend to go to teamviewer.com and click “Free Download”. You should do the same or, if installed on a mobile phone, download TeamViewer Remote Control for iOS or Android . Ask them to install the program like you would any other. On Windows, installation is fairly straightforward; just select “Set as default”, “Accept – next” and then allow TeamViewer to make changes to your device.
If they’re on a Mac, you will need to enable three different security settings. Fortunately, TeamViewer shows a pop-up explaining exactly which settings you need to enable; Screen recording , accessibility and full disk access . If you don’t see the pop-up, you will find all three options under System Preferences> Security & Privacy . After clicking on each setting, turn on TeamViewer. If you don’t see this option, click (+) , then select TeamViewer in your apps.
At this point, your friend will have a unique ID and password for their TeamViewer application. Enter this ID in the “Control remote computer” field in the TeamViewer application, and then enter the password when prompted. Once you do, you should see your friend’s computer screen in a window on your own device! There are tons of settings here to tinker with, but essentially you now have control over their computer.
When you end your session, remember to click (X) in the TeamViewer window. You also need to make sure that no one has access to the ID and password for both your friend and your TeamViewer application. Remote access is very useful, but falling into the wrong hands can be very dangerous. Try to drive this point to point; you don’t want your convenient remote session to crash cybersecurity.