Apple Remote Desktop: Creating Installers

As a followup to my previous post, I was trying to create an Apple Remote Desktop installer. This is usually something that's fairly trivial:


  1. Open Apple Remote Desktop
  2. Open File > Create Client Installer...
  3. Answer wizard questions
  4. Profit!

However, on trying this on my 10.11 Server install, I was instead presented with this:

Apple Remote Desktop error

In theory, ARD is supposed to automatically download components (like the client) which it doesn't have, and I actually managed to coax my local install of ARD, which had previously been giving the same error message, to do so.

In any event, if this happens, you can actually cheat and grab the client yourself from Apple's servers:

http://swcdn.apple.com/content/downloads/59/10/031-23124/x0sj4t1vbimv6h3ejhjzf3nwa6vt9ekxgd/RemoteDesktopClientShell.pkg

Not really sure if this is a good idea or not, but it fixed the problem for me!