Slide the MacBook into a bag, tuck it on a shelf, close the lid on your desk at the office — it can still be the machine you're working on. With one setting on, Remio keeps a lid-closed Mac awake and streaming, so the computer inside stays reachable from wherever you actually are.
Other remote desktop tools make you plug in a dummy HDMI dongle to keep a closed laptop streamable. Remio doesn't need one — turn on Keep Awake (lid closed) in Remio Host, and the Mac stays reachable with the lid shut.
Turn on Keep Awake (one time)
- Open Remio Host on the Mac you want to close the lid on.
- Find the Keep Awake (lid closed) toggle and turn it on.
- macOS asks for a one-time permission so Remio can keep the Mac reachable with the lid shut. Approve it — Remio detects the approval itself, so there's no restart needed. On macOS Tahoe, this approval shows up in the app's background-permission prompt, so look there if you don't see it right away.
- Close the lid. That's it — the toggle stays on for future sessions too.
Connecting to a lid-closed Mac
With Keep Awake on, close the lid and walk away. Connect from any client — iPhone, iPad, another Mac, Android, or Windows — and the session starts normally, exactly as if the lid were open.
One thing to expect: closing the lid usually locks the Mac. If it did, the stream shows the lock screen first. Type the password from your device and you unlock the Mac remotely, right inside the session — see the remote unlock guide for how that works.
Sleep, wake, and the device list
Keep Awake is what makes lid-closed streaming possible — without it, closing the lid sends the Mac to sleep like it normally would. A sleeping Mac shows as offline in your device list until something wakes it.
If the Mac has gone to sleep, Wake-on-LAN can bring it back so you can connect. Once Keep Awake is on, you generally won't need to lean on that — the Mac simply doesn't go to sleep in the first place.
Opening the lid — after a session, or in the middle of one — brings the built-in screen back on by itself, even after long overnight streaming sessions. There's nothing to reset.
Troubleshooting
- The Mac shows offline in the device list — either Keep Awake is off, or the Mac went to sleep before you turned it on. Open the lid, check the toggle in Remio Host, and try again.
- Screen stays black after opening the lid — this is fixed in current versions of Remio Host. Update the host to the latest version if you still see it.
- The permission prompt was dismissed by accident — turn the Keep Awake toggle off, then back on, to be asked again.
FAQ
Do I need a dummy HDMI dongle?
No. That's the workaround other remote desktop tools require to keep a lid-closed laptop streamable. Remio's Mac host keeps the machine awake and streaming with the lid shut, no extra hardware involved.
Will the screen come back when I open the lid?
Yes. The built-in display turns back on by itself as soon as you open the lid — during a session or after one, including after streaming overnight.
Does the battery drain with the lid closed?
The Mac stays awake the whole time, which uses power the way any awake Mac does. For long lid-closed sessions, keep the MacBook plugged in.
