Synergy is an open source software, which allows you to easily share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers with different operating systems, each with its own display, without special hardware. It's intended for users with multiple computers on their desk since each system uses its own monitors.
Redirecting the mouse and keyboard is as simple as moving the mouse off the edge of your screen. Synergy also merges the clipboards of all the systems into one, allowing cut-and-paste between systems. Furthermore, it synchronizes screensavers so they all start and stop together and, if screen locking is enabled, only one screen requires a password to unlock them all. Machines running following operating systems and TCP/IP networking are supported.
- Microsoft Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP
- Mac OS X 10.2 or higher
- Unix including Linux, Solaris, and other variants running X- Windows version 11 revision 4 or higher
Synergy unifies display of all the computers on your desktop to form a single virtual screen. You use the mouse and keyboard attached with only one of the computers while you use all of the computer monitors. Once you configure Synergy about how many screens you have and their relative positions, and move mouse off the edge of a screen, it jumps instantly to the neighboring screen. The keyboard input is fed to screen with mouse focus. Synergy can also handle multiple screens attached to the same computer.
Furthermore, it builds a single clipboard to make cut-copy-paste functions work across all the computers. It even converts newlines (CR-LF sequence) to each computer's native format so cut and paste between different operating systems works seamlessly.
Synergy also ensures that screensavers on all computers start/stop simultaneously.
Running Synergy is a 3 step process.
- Choose a server
- Install the software
- Configure and start the server
Step 1 - Choose a server
The first step is to choose which keyboard and mouse you want to share. The computer with that keyboard and mouse is called the "primary screen" and it runs the Synergy server. All of the other computers are "secondary screens" and run the Synergy client.
Step 2 - Install the software
Second, you need to install the software on all the computers that will share the mouse and keyboard.
Step 3 - Configure and start the server
Next, you need to configure Synergy with primary and secondary screens names, their relative positions, and other options. After installing Synergy on all the computers, click on Start > Programs > Synergy > Synergy on server computer, i.e., computer with keyboard and mouse attached with it.
Select Share this computer’s keyboard and mouse (server) option and click on Configure button.
Click on + button to add the server to the screens list and click on OK button. Use the + button to add other computers. Use controls under Links to connect screens together.
- Click on the server's name in the Screens list
- Choose the screen to the left of the server; use --- if there is no screen to the left of the server.
- Similarly choose the screens to the right, above and below the server.
- Repeat these steps for all the other screens.
Click OK to close the Screens & Links dialog.
Now click on Test button. It will start the server and you will see a console window with scrolling log messages informing you about Synergy's progress. If any error occurs you'll be intimated. Some errors are documented below.
| Failed to open screen (X11 only) | |
| Hint: Check permission to open the X display | |
| Address already in use | |
| Hint: Another program or another copy of Synergy is using the synergy port; stop the other program or choose a different port in the Advanced... dialog. In case you select different port, configure all clients accordingly. | |
| Connection forcefully rejected | |
| Hint: Check Synergy is running on the server and no firewall is blocking the server or Synergy port. | |
| Already connected | |
| Hint: Check that the Synergy client isn't already running. | |
| Refused client | |
| Hint: Add the client to the server's configuration file. | |
| Connection timed out | |
| Hint: Check that server-host-name is correct and no firewall is blocking the server or Synergy port. | |
| Connection failed | |
| Hint: Check that server-host-name is correct. | |
Read the errors to determine the problem then correct them and click on Test button again. Once everything works fine, stop all the clients then the server. Then start the server and all the clients.
Synergy is a boon for those who work with multiple computers on their desktop.
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