Barrier = Single keyboard/mouse solution for controlling multiple machines | Hacker News Reader

Barrier = Single keyboard/mouse solution for controlling multiple machines

github.com

61 pointsjbj14 comments

The only thing missing for me (and many others) is Wayland support.

So please, if someone reads this that wants to hack on that, please do!

https://github.com/debauchee/barrier/issues/109

Happy to see something like this. I paid for Synergy a long time ago, but as others have echoed, I'm not a huge fan of the direction they took.

They recently announced a v3 of synergy to address a lot of the issues

I started to use barrier a few days ago, and one problem arose almost immediately: the lack of support for AltGr key, which a lot of non us keyboards rely on for special characters. In my case, I can't type a # or @ using barrier, making it barely usable...

https://github.com/debauchee/barrier/issues/100

I love Barrier. I have a PC as my main machine with my keyboard and mouse and then I have my MacBook to the side. I find Barrier so smooth that it honestly is just like the MacBook is just another screen. My only gripe is that the copy paste between the PC and MacBook seems to only work one way some days and sometimes not at all.

I find it a bit ironic that the name of this is Barrier when the purpose is to eliminate barriers, but joke aside, this looks very useful!

It is apparently a fork from a program called synergy which at some version turned into a paid software. I guess the devs priority was to make the open source version up to date.

I'm a paid user of synergy and despite not necessarily loving the attitude and the direction of the company behind it, I find the software invaluable. Not just for the space saved on my desk, but also for copy-pasting across different environments (though it breaks on rich text - I have to wash things through notepad at times), sometimes I even abuse it uuencoding small files and moving them across. I use it on 2 different mixes of Windows, FreeBSD, MacOS and Linux(Pi).

Another big win is the mental order it ingrains in me - e.g. this screen is for sensitive browsing on a sandboxed machine, this is for shells and corporate intranet, that is the gaming box etc.

Also - its "follow focus" (really follow machine) behavior is the perfect sweet spot between alt-tabbing and true follow focus: if I move the mouse to the next screen, I'm focusing an app in that machine. Move back, my inputs go to the last focused app on the previous system. Can't explain this easily in words but it's so good - better than 2 monitors hooked to the same box.

I'll keep a close eye on barrier. I'm happy to see its open source core remain available and maintained.

I just installed barrier server on my raspberry pi and set up hotkeys to switch between 3 machines to send the input to, there is also an option to have the mouse continue out of the screen into the next screen monitor on a different computer which could be clever if using multiple monitors.

I can run an ssh server and serve rdp from localhost. It's free and reasonably secure.

Why would I use Barrier instead?

People use Dropbox instead of sshfs, so I bet there is a reason. I just don't see it.

I run multiple pcs (Linux, win, imac). Barrier setup lets me control all three like a multi monitor setup. Its suitable for gaming on windows with Linux as the input host (hotkey to lock input to one host).

Generally just super convenient when I want to control multiple real machines with dedicated displays. I even sometimes use it for Linux laptop + win tablet portable setup.

Assuming the two options are equally secure: Depending on your setup, it could add a level of convenience.

Potentially, sending just keystrokes as opposed to a full graphical interface might be less prone to lag (just hypothesizing here)

For me it replaces the unplugging and plugging of a usb cable, so when I discovered the barrier github repo a few days ago I just realized it was a solution to a problem I didn't realize I was having.

I made something similar as a toy project after being frustrated with Synergy/Barriers poor support for my keyboard layout (Czech).

It's for Linux only as it relies on udev and the encryption (AES with a key derived from a password shared between clients and server) is not ideal, but it was a fun project for sure.

https://github.com/htrefil/kshare

I've been using Synergy[0] in the past, but I eliminated the use-case for me. Only have one machine on my desk nowadays. It's commercial but works like a charm.

This here looks very promising, but since I already have a license and no more use-case I'm a bit bummed I can't/won't check it out..

[0] - https://symless.com/synergy

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