Jetbrains Remote

 When Microsoft announced it was pulling the plug on Visual Studio for Mac I had to find an alternative. I found Jetbrains Rider. 

I am very happy with Rider. But... Jetbrains also has a product called Gateway that boasts it allows remote development. I was excited. I installed it on my Macbook and my Mac Mini server. I was disappointed. It only works with Linux. 

Recently I started to see indications on the net it now worked with MacOs and Windows. I was excited again. Then disappointed. I posted my disappointment on Bluesky with the #jetbrains tag. Matt Ellis replied explaining that Gateway still wouldn't work but I could make the connection with Toolbox. I had tried this before but I tried again. It worked!

I am still not sure what I did to make it work, but this is probably the way:

1. Uninstall Gateway from both my Mac Mini and my Macbook

2. Install the same version of Rider on both machines (JetBrains Rider 2025.2 EAP 4)

3. Ensure the same version of Toolbox is both .(JetBrains Toolbox 2.6.3.43718, macOS 15.5, x64)

4. Restart both Mac Mini and Macbook

5 Using Jetbrains Toolbox

Change the perspective from local 

 to SSH

click the remote project and wait...

The first time I tried this I gave up after a minute or so.
I tried again. And again. Many times.

Eventually I was distracted for several minutes by something else and when I looked back there was a box on the screen asking me to agree to a licence!

I agreed. Time went by. Eventually Rider opened on my Macbook showing the project on my Mac Mini!

It really was running on the Mac Mini and displaying on the Macbook.
I knew this because a build and publish targetted the Mac Mini and when I restarted the DM_Website application on the Mac Mini the changes were there.

With apprehension I closed rider on the Macbook. It asked if I wanted to keep the remote end running. I said yes.

I used Toolbox to open the DM_Website project by SSL again. This time the local Rider started immediately and showed the remote project within a second or so.

So a big thank you to Matt Ellis on Bluesky for motivating me to try again.

Using Jetbrains Toolbox to make the connection remote development using Jetbrains Rider is a reality at last.