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If you’re the type of person who regularly follows tech news online, you probably know what it’s like to be the “techie” to your friends and family. It’s quite likely that people reach out to you for tech support, and being the nice person that you are, you try your best to help them out. This can be a fun excuse for a get-together if you live near your loved ones, but not everyone has that privilege, leading to all sorts of frustrating calls where you have to remotely troubleshoot your friends and family’s gadgets. Luckily, you have plenty more options nowadays than just sighing into your phone.
Walk them through their tech issues with a video call
If at all possible, don’t rely on a regular phone call when fixing tech issues. It might be natural for someone to call you up with their questions, but only having their voice to go on can quickly turn into a problem of its own.
Don’t get me wrong; plenty of tech questions can be solved on a phone call. But often, it’ll be much faster for you to figure out what’s going on if you can see what you’re working with. You can ask your dad, “Is there a port on the back that says HDMI 1? It should be, I don’t know, next to all the other ports…” Or you could have him 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 something of that nature, it’s likely be easiest to help them using a video call. Often, a FaceTime or other smartphone video call will be the simplest way to do this, since they can easily move the camera around to show you what they’re looking at.
Have them share their screen
Video calls are a great resource for tech support, assuming something isn’t wrong with the device you’d normally call on. If your loved one has an issue with their smartphone, tablet, or computer, instead of having them point a camera at it, you can have them simply share their screen.
Screen sharing used to be more complicated than it is today, but thanks to the prevalence of video conferencing apps, the feature is now easily accessible from essentially all modern devices. Your friend can share their laptop’s screen to your phone, their phone’s screen to your tablet, and their tablet’s screen to your laptop. You have multiple options to work with, as well, depending on the device in question.
For Apple users, FaceTime’s SharePlay might be the best route. The feature, first introduced with iOS 15 a few years ago, allows you to share your screen with other FaceTime participants. With iOS 18, SharePlay is expanding to include screen sharing and the ability to hand over control of your screen to others. Whether your friend is having trouble with their iPhone, iPad, or Mac, they can jump into a FaceTime call, share their screen, and you can help them through their problem. If you and the other person have Macs, you can ask them to share their screen using the Messages app, too.
But whether your friend uses Apple, Android, or Windows, there are plenty of other screen-sharing solutions. Popular apps like Zoom, Discord, Teams, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger have this feature built-in; all you need to do is make sure they download and set up the app in question (same on your end), then initiate the screen share.
Zoom has a very obvious “Share Screen” option in its video call window; have your friend click it, then click “Desktop,” and “Done.” Teams and Skype have a similar feature; have them click the box with the arrow, then “Desktop,” “Share,” or “Start Sharing.” From here, it’ll be much easier to give directions.
Make a screen recording to help them out
Credit: Keystro
If you don’t live in the same time zone as your loved ones but still want to help them out, you could try linking them one of our in-depth guides to commonly faced challenges such as how to take screenshots on an iPhone or on a Mac. However, if you can’t find the solution online, or if you prefer to provide a personal touch, you can make a screen recording. You can easily create a screen recording on both Android and iPhone, and even on a Windows PC or on a Mac, to explain how to access certain features.
Especially if you have a Mac, there’s a way to make your screen recordings even more useful. Apps such as Keystro ($6) and Cleanshot X ($29) allow you to overlay your keyboard button presses on to your screen recording. This will allow your friends and family to see which buttons to press to faithfully follow your tutorial.
Use an app for remote access
Sometimes, the easiest fix is one you do yourself. Yeah, yeah, teach a man to fish and all that, but nobody is going to be learning to fish if the tech support session devolves into frustration.
If you’re feeling up to the initial challenge, gaining remote access to your friend’s device can greatly simplify tech help on your end. Of course, that involves setting up remote access remotely. You’ll need to use one of the above methods to set up and install your remote access program of choice, and your family member or friend will need to follow your directions. Good luck!
Unfortunately, remote access is mostly only possible on Mac or PC. For iPhones and Androids, most of the “remote access” solutions you’ll find are actually glorified screen-sharing tools. Even the app I’m about to recommend, while available on mobile, only offers screen mirroring when trying to share access to a phone.
There are many methods to gain remote access to a Mac or PC, but the simplest is through an app like TeamViewer. TeamViewer boils down remote access to a unique ID and password; your friend will give you that information, and in seconds, you’ll have access to their entire computer, from your own computer, smartphone, or tablet.
You should definitely do a screen-share session while setting this app up, since it can be complicated to explain over the phone.
How to use TeamViewer to access a computer remotely
Have your friend go to teamviewer.com, and click “Download for free.” You should do the same, or, if installing on mobile, download TeamViewer Remote Control for iOS or Android. Have them install the program like they would any other. On Windows, installation is pretty simple; just choose “Default installation,” “Accept – next,” then allow TeamViewer to make changes to your device.
If they’re on Mac, there will be three different security settings to enable. Luckily, 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’ll find all three options under System Preferences > Security & Privacy. After clicking on each setting, enable TeamViewer. If you don’t see the option, click the (+), then choose TeamViewer from your applications.
Credit: Jake Peterson
At this point, your friend will have a unique ID and password for their TeamViewer app. Enter that ID in the “Control Remote Computer” field on your TeamViewer app, then enter the password when prompted. You should see your friend’s computer screen in a window on your own device! There are plenty of settings here you can mess with, but essentially, you now have control over their computer.
When you’re done with the tech support session, click the (X) in the TeamViewer window. You also want to be sure no one else has access to the ID and password you entered earlier. Remote access is very useful, but it can be extremely dangerous in the wrong hands. Try to hammer that point home; you don’t want your convenient remote session to spawn into a cybersecurity debacle.
