Mac Remote Desktop Crashing When Copying

Mac Remote Desktop Crashing When Copying
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 Oct 06 2021
11 Comments (11 New)
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Hopefully this is the correct place to post this now that the UserVoice website has been shut down.

 

The latest versions of Remote Desktop for Mac have introduced a regular freezing problem when copying anything within a workspace. This is particularly bad in the Remote Desktop Beta, which we've currently abandoned, having used this for the last few years, and occurs quite regularly in the App Store version.

 

Force quitting and then relaunching does at least retain the workspace, but until the force quit there is no interaction, just the blue spinning circle.

 

This is on a 16Gb M1 MacBook Pro connecting to a Windows 2019 RemoteApp server.

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Brass Contributor

This problem has continued over to a new M1 Pro 14" MacBook Pro running Monterey v12.0.1. Remote Desktop is unusable and for now we've abandoned it.

Brass Contributor

This problem has now started happening on a colleague's new M1 Pro 16" MacBook Pro running Monterey v12.0.1 that has been set up without any application or preference file transfer, i.e. from scratch without any influence from an existing Mac. MRD v10.7.1 and MRD Beta 10.7.2 are used.

 

All of the above Macs connect to workspaces on Windows Servers 2012, 2016 and 2019 RemoteApp servers, mostly using FileMaker Pro v19.

Brass Contributor

We have moved away from Remote Desktop for Mac while this problem exists and have been using Jump Desktop to connect to the same workspace apps from the same servers and have had none of these problems. Jump Desktop is also Apple Silicon native.

 

In addition, Jump Desktop supports proper international keyboard mappings. We'd like to return to Remote Desktop to mirror what many of our clients are using, but cannot currently develop in it due to the frequent crashing.

Brass Contributor

Still testing the latest beta (10.7.2) releases and the interesting behaviour is that once MRD Beta freezes, it also prevents access to the destination Mac app for a number of minutes, which does eventually respond.

 

However, upon regaining access to the app and testing whether the original text could be pasted, it then became unresponsive again for a while, then OK again after that. This could be repeated until MRD Beta was forcibly quit.

 

Back to Jump Desktop again for now for reliability and proper international keyboard mapping. However, it isn't free and doesn't provide a proper SDI experience, behaving more like the old MDI.

Brass Contributor

We are still experiencing this problem after upgrading to v10.7.3 (1966). No Mac app was involved, just an internal copy of some text within FileMaker Pro v19.4.1 and Remote Desktop stopped responding.

 

Again to emphasise, this doesn't happen using the same workspaces within Jump Desktop, Windows RemoteApp connections or using FileMaker locally.

Brass Contributor

I believe we've finally found the problem with the regular crashing when copying.

 

We also run Parallels on our Macs and the Parallels Toolbox is installed, which includes a Clipboard History utility. Retrospectively, it may seem obvious that a clipboard utility could cause Remote Desktop for Mac to become unusable, but we've a number of MacBook Pros here that have had varying symptoms, which has muddied the water.

 

We'll post this on the Parallels forum as well, but at least we have finally resolved the problem.

 

The lack of any feedback from Microsoft has been very disappointing.

Copper Contributor

We have the same problem with Macbooks on M1 Pro processors without Parallels, this issue is not resolved.

Copper Contributor

Same problem is happening with me. When I copy something in remote desktop it freezes when I switch to Mac screen or close remote desktop.

I'm using a 2020 M1 Macbook Pro

Brass Contributor

@Robert_de_Vries  and @umutalparslan 

 

Since we removed Parallels Toolbox (puts a drop down menu in the top right of the menu bar) this has completely resolved our problem.

 

If not running this, are you sure you don't have another clipboard or keyboard utility that could be giving similar problems?

 

I'd recommend starting up in Safe Mode (https://osxdaily.com/2021/02/09/how-boot-safe-mode-m1-mac-apple-silicon/) and seeing if the problem persists. If not, then there is likely some software conflict going on.

 

An alternative is Jump Desktop is our server RDP management tool, which will also run RemoteApp workspaces. Workspace rendering isn't so good as Microsoft Remote Desktop unless the Quality is set to 'Very High - 24 bit color' and Performance is set to 'High Quality Fonts' and 'Use Bitmap Caching' is set in the workspace preferences'. Of course Jump Desktop isn't free, but it is worth the money and perhaps worth downloading the trial copy - available from the Jump Desktop | Remote Desktop | iPad iPhone Android Mac ...https://www.jumpdesktop.com and also the Apple App Store (with the usual multiple computer installations within the App Store licensing rules).

 

We appear to have lost 2-way communication with the Microsoft Mac Development team since moving to this platform from HockeyApp and we're also seeing old bugs previously removed, now raising their heads again, but not with this particular problem.

Copper Contributor

Same here - frustrating. Will trial Jump Desktop

Copper Contributor

I changed the font on SQL Management Studio to Inconsolata. Copying text from SMMS to Mac apps over RDP started causing rainbow wheels. Switching to another font fixed the issue.