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There are several ways to remotely control the Mac back in your office or home but they all come down to whether they're easy enough and reliable enough to actually use. When they are then from your iPhone or iPad you can grab files you forgot to bring, you can run desktop apps and you can just switch the thing off from afar. Of all the ways to do it, Parallels Access 3.0 is the latest, it's currently our favorite and it's now the one with an Apple Watch app.

You'll never use the Apple Watch app: it is the weakest part of the software. Really it's the only weak spot: you use it check that you're connected to a remote computer but you have to have your iPhone with you and running Parallels Access. So at best it's a way to check that you're still connected or it's a perhaps a pixel more convenient tapping your wrist to disconnect instead of having to reach all the way down to the phone in your hand. Also, it's peculiarly confusing just trying to find the app: it's listed as Access rather than Parallels or Parallels Access in the Apple Watch utility.

That aside, Parallels Access 3.0.0 is excellent. You download the Mac software from the official site, then the free iOS app from the App Store and sign in to both. From then on, your Mac is on your iPhone. You can access any OS X application, any Finder folder. It's particularly neatly presented, too: you optionally have a launch screen that displays your Mac applications in neat iOS-like rows. Go into any app and you also get a sidebar that includes a very LaunchCenter Pro-like rocket icon to bring up a list of apps at the foot of the screen. Skipping between apps is quick and everything runs perfectly –– because it's running on your Mac, you're just accessing it on your phone.

Parallels Access is very clever at how you access desktop apps. It's one of those cases where it seems obvious in retrospect but its so very obvious system of taps and gestures has eluded other screen-sharing apps we tried. It actually is that if you try what you think something should be, it is. Pinching and zooming, scrolling, single and double tapping are all straightforward where they've been awkward in other apps. You can make your Mac's mouse or trackpad do a right-click by pressing on your iPhone with two fingers. It could not be better for ease of use and for good-looking, clear design too. It could come without the mandatory tutorial video, though, or at least the video could give you a clue how long this lecture is going to be. Otherwise, it is all so clever as make you not realise how smartly done it is.

That said, there is one aspect that is simply ugly. If you're ever desperate enough to need to remotely control your Mac from right in front of it, you will see that Mac's screen resolution change drastically. The moment you are connected from your iPhone, your iMac adjusts its screen to a far lower resolution. Utterly horrible. Audio is also routed to your iPhone instead of the Mac which can be just what you want or can be a way to get one of those annoying websites blasting your earbuds.

When you disconnect, of course the audio returns to the Mac but also the screen springs back to way Jobs intended. Unfortunately it often –– not always –– leaves windows resized or in new positions. That's all you'll see if you're a normal person who remote controls from, you know, actually remote places: you'll come home to wonder why your windows are rearranged. On your Mac, obviously. Not your home.

We're not entirely clear why this is necessary as Parallels Access doesn't show your Mac window per se, it doesn't show you the desktop. It does show you exactly the screen your iMac is showing when you're in an app but you can't, for instance, get to the Trash on the desktop.

What you can do is forget all of the screen sharing and instead just treat your remote Mac as a list of files and folders. When you have just forgotten a file or suddenly realise you need something else that's on your Mac and not in, say, Dropbox, then this list view is good. Drill down your folders to the file and then grab it for yourself. There's no way to move a document off your Mac and onto, for example, iCloud Drive on your iPhone but you can share it. That means two different things, though, with the most impressive being that you can share any file to anyone: Parallels Access generates a link you can send to someone. They can then paste that link into their browser and be served up with the file.

In practice it's occasionally a little flaky: we had the odd time when Parallels Access would tell us it couldn't copy the link but if we just tried again, it worked. Also when we're doing this we typically find that any audio playing stutters: it's clearly a connection issue and we've never been able to get a link in the end.

The other, more familiar way of sharing is similarly good with the odd tiny hiccup. Apple's Sharing Extension works so you can be on your iPhone, looking at a listing of a file on your Mac, and send that document to the appropriate iOS app. Oddly, though, when you first do this you'll think you can't: the Sharing Extension has only the barest minimum apps Message and Mail in it. There is an Open With button, though, and pressing that gets you the more regular list of apps.

Parallels Access 3.0.0 is good. The question is whether you need it and the answer is probably yes. Unless you're distracted by eating a very good biscuit right now then you're not likely to be reading this far without suspecting you would benefit from this kind of screen sharing. What we've found is that we can do without it yet once it's here, we use it like crazy. We were addicted to the similar LogMeIn until that company recently changed its mind about what a "lifetime" purchase means. Dropping that with the intention of finding a replacement, though, we just never quite got around to it and seemed to survive quite well.

Yet after we'd tested Parallels Access to pieces and walked away to think about whether it was genuinely useful or not, we got an email asking for an important document. Yes. We used Parallels Access to get it from our Macs and send it on.

If you can think of one single reason to get Parallels Access, get it and you will be using it a hundred times more often than you imagine. Give it a go: you can try out the service for free for two weeks. After that there are many different price options but the two that count are $3 for a month's use or $20 for the year. Buy the year's version.

Parallels Access 3.0.0 requires iOS 7.0 or later on iPhone and is free with in-app purchases on the App Store. The Mac version needs OS X 10.7 or higher and is free from the official site.

Who is Parallels Access 3.0.0 for:
More people than you'd think. When you can easily delve back into your Mac from another building, another city, another continent then you will.

Who is Parallels Access 3.0.0 not for:
If you're already using a similar product like Chrome Remote Desktop then maybe you're fine, but we still think it'd be worth taking this one for a spin as it's well done.

-William Gallagher (@WGallagher)

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