Two PCs. One Keyboard/Mouse. No Wires

Posted on March 20, 2007 by Iain Magee

Now this is worth getting excited about! I came across this little opensource utility a few weeks ago and have been using it since with good results. 

Most of us are familiar with an extended desktop across multiple displays attached to one PC, and many of us will have used mechanical or electronic KVM switches to share a keyboard & mouse between multiple machines.

Synergy lets you share one keyboard & mouse between multiple PCs without any additional hardware by communicating over a network connection. Moving the mouse to the left or right edge of your screen causes it to move seamlessly onto the monitor of the next PC. The keyboard is active for whichever PC your mouse is captured by.

One PC acts as the host with attached keyboard/mouse - the others as client. I use it at work with my main PC as the host – and my laptop as the client.

The user interface is awful!  But it’s free so we can live with that … Here are some simple step by step instructions for setting it up :-

  1. Download & install the latest release binaries from Source Forge on both PCs.
  2. Run the program on the host
    1. Select “Share this computer’s keyboard & mouse”
    2. Choose “Configure” to set up your screens
    3. Press the + key under the screen list to add a new screen
    4. Note that the screen name should be the name of your PC! Other settings should work as defaults. You’ll need to add both the host & client PCs here.
    5. Then add a Link by matching up PC1 is right of PC2 – and the converse PC2 is left of PC1. Note that it’s not particularly obvious but you need to click the + key to add the link. You can create wraparounds etc
    6. Click OK.
    7. Click Start.
    8. The host appears on the traybar and waits for a connection
  3. Run the program on the client.
    1. Choose “Use another computer’s shared keyboard & mouse”
    2. Enter PC name of host
    3. Click Start.
  4. And that should be that!

 

All sorts of complicated linkups are possible – between multiple PCs – which may even be running different operating systems. Most varieties of Windows, MAC OS & Unix/Linux are supported.

Very cool!

http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/

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Filed under: Computers, Software, Technology

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7 Responses

  1. Simon, on March 20th, 2007 at 8:09 pm Said:

    And there is even something better: Check out http://www.maxivista.com

    It does not only what Synergy does, but also something very interesting extra: Using the 2nd PC’s monitor as a dual monitor for the main PC.

    Simon

    Reply
  2. Iain Magee, on March 21st, 2007 at 12:16 am Said:

    I’ll have to get a look at that.

    Also – found a good tutorial for setting up Synergy – much better than my attempt! It can be found here :-

    http://www.simplehelp.net/2006/08/02/how-to-share-a-keyboard-and-mouse-with-multiple-computers/

    Reply
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  5. Matt Marnell, on February 20th, 2009 at 7:21 pm Said:

    I am using it right now with a Windows 7 host and Vista client – absolutely no trouble on the install! Wow. So much better than my electrical KVM – and I am very excited that I could use it between the different OSes at my desk.

    Reply
  6. Fenix, on May 17th, 2009 at 10:26 pm Said:

    Is it possible to still use dual monitors on either of the computers?

    Reply
  7. Iain Magee, on May 18th, 2009 at 7:16 am Said:

    Yes – you can use dual or more monitors with no problems on either or all of the attached machines.

    Reply

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