There are numerous websites and blogs out there that highlight Synergy while linking to my site and the pictures of my home office as an example. I am happy that I’ve been able to point out this incredibly useful software keyboard/mouse switch but the time has come to start pointing out the utility that is eclipsing Synergy and that tool is called Input Director. Development of Synergy has been on a long hiatus since April 2006 and there’s no sign of a new version. Combined with my experiences where Synergy randomly stops working when a Windows 7 slave system is part of the configuration has led me to give Input Director a try.
If you want the short version of this post I’ll summarize; Input Director does most of what Synergy does, and a lot more. I’ve run both side by side for a while and have completely switched over to Input Director now. Synergy has been a faithful utility that I couldn’t have done without and thanks goes out to Chris for creating it in the first place.
One of the features of Input Director that I really like is that the layout of the screens and systems can be changed on the fly in the Master Configuration panel. With Synergy I often had to switch to a pre-configured file since I change layouts quite a lot when I’m working on different things at different times. By simply dragging around the visual location of the screens in the configuration panel I can make changes much faster and without any hassle. And I haven’t experienced any of the problems with Windows 7 either, which is, of course, a huge plus for Input Director.
In addition to that, slaves can be configured so they allow themselves to be taken over by any system or by system name, or IP and subnet. Because my “master” system is interchangeable it comes as no surprise that this is something I’m quite happy with. No more fiddling with, or swapping out, configuration files on the master and using a network based script control that stops/starts Synergy remotely while making changes to the registry of the remote systems to update the name of the master system they should listen to.
Another great advantage is that Input Director will run as a Windows Service on Vista and Windows 7 (with Synergy you’d have to use the “start at login” instead of “start at startup”) and slaves are immediately available at the logon screen.
One of the other things I had gotten annoyed about with Synergy is that it doesn’t play nice with my Wacom Intuos 4 tablet. When using it in absolute mode and hitting the top edge of a screen it would try and take control over the remote system at that edge and unfortunately would lock up the mouse cursor on the remote system. Again, this required me to use a different pre-configured file for the Synergy master system. With Input Director there’s an option to temporarily turn off transitions. You can get to it from the tray icon menu or assign hotkeys. That’s the way I like it!
There are some more complex configuration options for setting screen edge percentages in Synergy that aren’t supported by Input Director (at this time) which I did use to ensure that transitions would not occur along certain portions of the edges of screens but after having moved to Input Director and its option to not allow transitions near the corners I found that it didn’t take me long to get used to this. I no longer miss this particular configuration feature that Synergy has.
I recommend you have a look at Input Director and check out the plethora of other useful features it offers. I could go on and on about it but I figure that if it works for me and my elaborate multi monitor setup then it should work for almost everyone else as well. Shane Richards, the developer of Input Director, has done an amazing job.
Oh, I may have forgotten to mention, it’s free. So what are you waiting for?
Thanks for the tip. I’ve been using KaVoom KM. It has many of the features that Input Director has, but it’s not free. The only problem I have with it is that the shared clipboard is not very reliable on Vista and Windows 7, as it stops working every now and again. Is the shared clipboard on Input Director reliable?
It looks very good, unfortunately, the only situation when I really need it is connection the companies notebook with the private PC (using one of my 3 22″ screens for this). But the FAQ highlights it clearly in FAQ A:2.10 – no chance if the VPN Client does not allow local connections to the LAN.
Input Director seemes like a very nice piece of software, but unfortunately it’s missing one of the key components of Synergy; it only works with Windows. So for me it’s not an option, no matter what other features it has.
But I sure would like to have a cross-plattform-client with the features Input Director offers.
Looks cool and all, but Windows-only kills it for me. However, there’s actually further development of Synergy going on at http://code.google.com/p/synergy-plus/
It really is too bad Input Director isn’t available on anything but Windows, though. It looks very, very good.
I have developed on Windows for some time, and am now trying my hand at iPhone development. For this I had to purchase a Mac Mini (developer tools don’t work on Windows, and OS/X doesn’t virtualize well).
I tried using Synergy, as my KVM won’t work (the Mac Mini has only USB keyboard and mouse; the KVM is older and is just the PS/2-style plug), so after some searching found it.
However, one significant drawback (and is also a drawback of VNC, with which I tried connecting to the Mac from the XP machine) is that one cannot Control+Drag! This is a required gesture for XCode development (to connect items to each other, in the visual development portion — I’m not positive whether I’ll really need that, or whether I will be able to achieve the same linkage with a different manner — but as I’m just getting started and trying to follow along with the video tutorials, I am unable to do what they demonstrate, unless I switch to that keyboard and mouse).
Do you know of any other software that is cross-platform and will work on both Windows and Mac machines? (“You” being Stefan as well as the readers.)
Thanks,
Ken
Ken,
I would highly recommend using SynergyKM on the Mac and the regular Synergy on the PC. I think that’s the very best solution crossing Windows and Mac OS X. Using “raw” Syngery on the Mac is not really fun.
Regarding the keyboard problem; there’s in my mind only one good option: Get yourself an Apple keyboard for a few bucks and use it on both systems. Funny enough, but using the Apple keyboard on the Windows machine is by far not as bad as vice versa.
Good luck and I hope this helps 🙂
Ciao
Dennis
If you are looking for a cross platform updated version of Synergy, you might want to try Synergy+ . I haven’t had any problems using it with windows 7 and ubuntu. But I’ve only been using it a short time and my setup is nowhere near as complex as Stefan’s. However from what I see so far it’s very promising.
http://code.google.com/p/synergy-plus/
Hi,
I just noticed that v1.2.2 has just been released with improved support for Windows 7 and more flexible monitor layout options. Might be worth checking out – http://www.inputdirector.com
John.
I just began using Synergy KM on iMac as master and Synergy on Windows as slave. Mac mouse works fine, but when I connect Wacom tablet and mouse over to the PC it disappears, though items on the screen flicker and highlight. Not sure if anyone can give me a suggestion of other software or how to resolve this problem.
Used ID with a laptop as a slave. Everything worked just fine, with one (critical) exception.
My laptop has fingerprint reader which just stopped working. After I uninstalled ID, everything working well, again. Nothing reported in device manager or anything. Just a warning.
What I liked about synergy was that I was able to work on my Redhat system transparently. Synergy is cross platform and works great if you have a mix of windows and linux systems. I have seen synergy hangup on Windows Vista but its a rare thing so its ok with me.
Stephen – I have the same problem with my Wacom tablet and no solution yet. Too bad Input Director doesn’t work with Macs.
mookiemu –
What setup are you using?
I had Synergy setup from XP (slave) to Ubuntu (master), but when I moved to Windows 7 (master) and Ubuntu (slave) I haven’t been able to get it to work.
I have tried Synergy, Synergy+, Qsynergy, both with computer names and IP addresses.
this is good to know, thx for sharing. unfortunately i’m also disappointed and agree w/ the others that this is only a win app. who only uses single platforms these days?
I’ve only recently have started using Synergy, the app is now very actively developed but I’m going to try both and see which one I like better.