After purchasing a professional license with an affiliate code, there's a possible issue where you only have rights to the second version. You can contact customer service and they will respond quickly to add your professional license.
If needing to keep one Mac from updating the iOS for a software compatibility issue, doing everything else on another Mac solves that problem & using Synergy makes it all easy & practical.
Uses SSL network encryption which is especially important since the shared keyboard data may contain passwords, and the application can "control your computer" (as the MacOS X permissions dialog puts it) it is important to ensure that the connection between computers is secured so that even if you are using it on an open WiFi hotspot, others cannot see the data being sent, nor can they inject data into the connection.
Note: This feature is only included with Synergy Pro and all paid versions of Synergy 2.
If you know how to compile code from source, you can follow the documentation to compile the core binaries (server and client) and run them on your machines without a GUI using a hand-crafted configuration. Given how seamlessly and beautifully this works on a LAN, the paid option is more of a convenience that helps contribute to FOSS. The model is similar to Xchat and does not bar you from using the full-featured version.
Depending on what distro you have installed on your machine and your local network settings you may not be able to actually slave Microsoft machine to your Linux box.
While being partially open source, Symless charges for builds of their binaries, which is allowed by the GPL (open source license). Cost of $29 for Synergy Basic, or $39 for Synergy Pro. Older versions of the binaries are available for free, and the source code for the core of the app can be downloaded and compiled manually.
This is more of a hopeful suggestion rather than a con, but they currently do not have the "waking-on-lan" feature to power up a notebook in closed position, but they do have plans to include that feature for future upgrades. Some users are definitely looking forward to that feature being available.
If you use the Mac as the "server", the mouse will switch to the "client" computer but not the keyboard. Simply entering a password in Chrome on the Mac will enable the SecureEventInput and kill the ability to use the keyboard on a Synergy client. The Synergy client doesn't notify the user if this setting is enabled or not.
There is a known bug which Symless are working on where it may stop working randomly when using Linux as a client. They are working on a fix, and it’s due imminently. https://symless.com/synergy/help/known-bugs
Only one computer can act as a host at a time, and the mouse/keyboard sharing is one way. So if you have computer at home, and a computer at work and you want to link your laptop to different computers depending on where you are, you need to change the host settings for each location.
It's possible to use computer's keyboard and mouse with a jailbroken Android tablet or phone. Available on GitHub: https://github.com/symless/synergy-android-cyanogen
Support for non-enterprise users is only available through the forums and other public channels. Only enterprise customers get the benefit of one-to-one phone and email support.
Some times causes extra synergy dock icon that bounces forever to appear on mac that cannot be closed or force closed preventing mac from rebooting or shutting down.
You're running a linux box or a Mac? Then Multiplicity is not for you, sorry. It runs on a variety of Windows flavours, but it doesn't support anything but Windows.
Multiplicity enables a single keyboard and mouse to control up to nine PCs each with a dedicated display monitor. The cursor can be smoothly moved directly to any monitor regardless of which PC the monitor is connected to.
Quickly and securely drag and drop files of any size between PCs. Advanced compression techniques ensure very large files and folders, such as video files, transfer quickly. Copy and paste images and text between PCs, local and remote. Formatting attributes are retained when copying and pasting formatted images.
Multiplicity supports control of remote PCs with multi-monitor configurations. Users may select the specific remote monitor display to show on the local PC monitor and freely switch between them. The window that contains the remote PC display can be resized and moved between monitors attached to the controlling PC.
Multiplicity supports multi-monitor configurations. Any Multiplicity controlled PC may have multiple monitors and Multiplicity will enable the user to seamlessly move the cursor across all PCs and all display screens.
A second method to connect to a remote PC is to select it from the thumbnail sidebar. The sidebar can be displayed all the time or automatically based on mouse control. When sufficient thumbnails are available the sidebar will scroll and can be one or two columns wide.
Multiplicity enables multiple PCs to access a single PC. This enables staff in different locations to access a PC when collaborating on a task or problem resolution.
Multiplicity supports simultaneous operation in both seamless and remote mode. This enables multiple local PCs to be seamlessly switched between using their own monitors while also controlling other PCs using a shared monitor, keyboard and mouse.
Multiplicity enables a single monitor, keyboard and mouse to be used to control other PCs. Remote PCs can be located anywhere on the network. Keyboard and mouse inputs will be sent to the remote PC and the remote display will be shown on the local PC monitor.
Multiplicity can display a full screen of active desktop thumbnails from remote PCs available to be selected and controlled from the Primary PC. Based on your monitor resolution Multiplicity will automatically resize and adjust the number of thumbnails displayed and horizontal scroll to accommodate as many thumbnail views as are available.
... if you have Windows machines.
It has everything you'll likely need, including copy and paste across machines.
The code is robust, the documentation is straightforward and complete, and it doesn't need support.
Setup is simple, install it and forget it.
While InputDirector generally works well most of the time, right out of the box, it does also expose many configuration options that you can tweak and tune to change it to your liking.
From their website: "Input Director is compatible with Windows 10, Windows 8/8.1, Windows 7, Windows 2008, Windows Vista, Windows 2003 and Windows XP(SP2). The systems must be networked."
This advanced configuration option is really useful if your computer is on multiple networks and you need to tell ID which network it should send the keyboard/mouse traffic over.
Not the best user interface design, especially comparing to modern trends. It can be a bit of a search through all the tabs and options, and experimenting with them a bit, before you get what you want. With that said, there aren't so many options that it's too much to handle.
The app works fine for few minutes but after a while, it starts to freeze. This makes the program impossible to work with, and this was the case through weeks of use.
ShareMouse can share the clipboard between multiple computers.
Instead of overwriting all remote clipboards, ShareMouse performs the clipboard synchronization on the target computer of your choice.
Use CTRL-V to insert the local clipboard and SHIFT-CTRL-V to insert a remote computer's clipboard contents.
ShareMouse does not require any configuration at all. Fire up the client on each computer and drag the mouse to the monitor of the other monitor.
ShareMouse automatically determines the monitor layout without manual configuration. No fiddling with IP addresses or port configuration.
ShareMouse works in any direction.
No static client roles such as "master" or "slave". Each client can remotely control any other computer from any mouse/keyboard at any time without re-configuration.
The built-in monitor manager offers the most intuitive way to arrange monitor positings, including complex multi-monitor setuos.
Instead of a static grid, monitors can be offset to achieve seamless transition of the mouse pointer.
Mouse trails help to easily find the mouse pointer in large monitor setups. Optional arrow trails on inactive monitors also help to navigate in huge setups.
Thanks to the ShareMouse service, ShareMouse can remote control remote Windows applications even if running with admin credentials. ShareMouse can also remote control darkened UAC dialogs (e.g. system permission requests).
ShareMouse recognizes if a computer is launched in a different computer environment and auto-switches to the corresponding monitor layout. This is useful if you use a mobile computer in different locations.
Scroll-wheel speed may be different between computers. ShareMouse allows to fine-tune the scroll speed individually on each computer to achieve a consistent and seamless experience.
If you use 2 mice and 2 keyboards simultaneously, there are issues with keyboard focus. For the first PC keyboard to work on the second computer, you need either to use hotkeys to switch focus, or to use the first PC mouse to move the cursor to the second computer. If the cursor is moved by the second PC mouse, the first PC keyboard focus will not switch, causing a confusion, when one keyboard works on both computers, but the other keyboard works on one computer only.
ShareMouse is made by a professional company and advanced features are not free-of-charge. A lot of the features are "advanced" and there is also no way to try them out.
ShareMouse does not transmit audio to save network bandwidth.
The purpose of a software kvm is to control multiple computers which are sitting on the same desk. It requires all computers to stand next to each other. If you wish to listen to audio of any such PC, increase volume on that PC.