Keyboard, Mouse, & Video (or KVM) Switches aren’t what we’d call new technologies. Though they’re still useful (in fact, I have one in a drawer beside me right now), but I don’t know how common they really are in the home.
Still , it’s not terribly unusual to have a couple of machines running side-by-side in the home or office. In that case, it would be nice to be able to share the mouse and the monitor between the systems.
Synergy makes it really easy to do that. It’s free, it’s operating system independent, and here’s how to set it up.
First, you’re going to need to grab a copy of Synergy. It’s a small download and is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. You’ll need to install it on all (yep – it’s not just limited to two machines) of the machines that you’re planning to utilize.
Now we need to configure the computer that’s going to act as the server. This machine is the one into which the keyboard and mouse are physically connect. Start Synergy and you should see the following screen:
From there, make sure that you’ve selected “Share this computer’s keyboard and mouse (server),” then click on “Configure.” On the following screen, click on the “+” button. Here, you’re going to be listing the machines with which Synergy is going to share your keyboard and mouse.
In the “Screen Name” field, enter the name of the machine on the network (yes, I’m one of the weird ones that names the machines on his LAN. That’s another post for another time.):
Check any of the other options that you’d like. I normally leave them blank. You’ll return to the “Screens & Links” screen. Now it’s time to enter the name of the server. Once again, click on the “+” button and then fill out the form except this time, specify the name of the machine on which you’re currently working.
Now we’ve got to tell Synergy how the machines are physically oriented around one another. For me, my laptop sits to the left of my desktop monitors so my configuration looks like this:
After that, I click “OK” to return to the main Synergy screen and then I click “Start.” Permitting everything went well, you should see:
Finally, start Synergy on your client machine but this time, you’re going to select “use another computer’s shared keyboard and mouse (client).” Be sure to type the name of the server you just finished configuring:
Again, if all else is successful you should see the success dialog again and should now be able to slide your mouse from one machine to the other as well as type on whatever machine the cursor is currently active.
Synergy is one of those applications that I’ve used for a long time so much so that it feels incredibly cumbersome to have more than one mouse and keyboard with multiple machines.
Plus it definitely beats having the corded mess that comes with a hardware-based switch.
Travis says
I used Synergy a few years back to share a mouse between my macbook pro and and old windows based laptop I had. It was a great solution you are a dealing with multiple operating systems.
I am currently using a different piece of software that serves the same function, however. Teleport works just like Synergy, but is only available for OS X. I find it a little easier to setup than Synergy, as well.
http://abyssoft.com/software/teleport/
Will P says
Let me know when someone makes a GUI config utility for *nix. Config file ninja skills are good and all, but not everyone has them. 🙂
Cool app though.
Tom says
Ha! I forgot about that. At one point I was sharing among machines one of which was running Linux and I had to keep tweaking the config file to get it initially setup.
Funny.
Steven Rossi says
I’m a HUGE fan of Synergy. Like, it’d be hard to overstate how much I appreciate this software. I currently have a 4-computer/5-monitor set-up and I use only one keyboard and mouse (although, to be fair, two of the computers are laptops,but I don’t use their keyboards or trackpads…also, yes, 4 computers and 5 monitors is extremely overkill).
I should recommend a couple of things here. First off, it’s a little more complicated to install Synergy on a Mac or Linux computer as you’ll have to manually edit a file. However, there are a few GUI’s out there which make it easier. For Mac, I use SynergyKM (http://sourceforge.net/projects/synergykm/). Another option is QuickSynergy (http://code.google.com/p/quicksynergy/), which works both on Mac and Linux.
Lastly, I’d like to recommend Synergy+ (http://code.google.com/p/synergy-plus/), which is a maintenance fork of the original project, as Synergy2 hasn’t been updated in quite some time. It fixes a bunch of bugs. As a caveat, though, I haven’t tried Synergy+ with SynergyKM or QuickSynergy, but I’m sure it works fine.
Will P says
Thanks for the heads up for the Mac GUI’s for Synergy. Might be worth checking out again.
Michael Novotny says
Synergy is indeed the only app (or at least the only one I know of) that can connect mixed OS’s (aka. you can connect a Mac and a PC, etc).
However, I’d like to mention an app called Teleport (http://abyssoft.com/software/teleport/) for those in an all Mac environemnt. If all you have is Mac’s, you cannot get a better app for single mouse / keyboard domination!
Tom says
Look like you and Travis have some serious Teleport love.
Maybe a guest article on it would be swell =P.
Michael Novotny says
Oops! I totally glossed over Travis’ second paragraph mentioning Teleport already. But yes, it is good enough to mention twice! 😉