Barrier Is the new Free and Open Source Synergy – share keyboard and mouse cross-platform

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With COVID and the new work from home norm, your home office setup is going to trumps everything else. For those of us that have multiple devices to work with on a daily basis, having an easy way to control and navigate between them is key. Over the years we shared multiple virtual KVM (keyboard mouse switch) that allows you to use one set of keyboard and mouse to control one more than one computer, some are paid, some are free but PC only and some are open-sourced.

The landscape of virtual KVM has changed since the last time we talked about this. Many of the tools still exist but strangely in this more open-source oriented environment more virtual KVM is turning into a paid app. The most notable app is synergy, it was the go-to open-source freeware everyone enjoyed but turned into a paid app.

Introduce Barrier

If you are familiar with Synergy then Barrier will come and feel like a twin clone for you. Barrier is the open-source fork from the Synergy that everyone used to love. You can download Barrier here.

2020 06 03 2134 600x426 - Barrier Is the new Free and Open Source Synergy - share keyboard and mouse cross-platform

The advantage of a piece of new software in an old shell means many of the tips and tricks we showed you before they still work. For example, if you are trying to share between a Mac and PC, using Barrier and you can follow the previous guide on how to map the keyboard so you can use the proper keyboard shortcut on the dedicated OS

Barrier not only supports the basic Linux, Windows and Mac, it also supports ARM-based Linux. That means SoC PC like Raspberry Pi also can run Barrier.

Check out Barrier if your daily work involves work on multiple PC, Mac or Linux even Raspberry Pi. Your work experience will improve by having a clean desk, de-clustering all the unnecessary peripheral.

5 COMMENTS

  1. Are there any hardware alterantives for this kind of setup? I have barrier running and for the most part its great, but sometimes the cursor freezes on the connected machine and won’t move. I shake the mouse for a while and it appears somewhere after a few seconds. This happens a couple of times a day and if it happens while im in the zone coding it breaks my flow.

    Would pay for a rock solid alternative. Wondering if that exists. My setup is linux connected to Mac over 5 monitors if that makes any difference.

    • Take a look at USB-to-USB connections. They work ok, but I do get the disconnect/freeze issues too. Sadly I’m here looking for a software alternative to my hardware

  2. There should be button to “like” web pages, like posts on IG.
    I haven’t tried this program yet, but looking forward to.

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