Synergy Tips and Tricks
Description: Mouse and Keyboard Sharing
Keywords: Virtual Screen, Open Source, Software

### Tips and Tricks

- Be aware that not all keystrokes can be handled by synergy. In particular, ctrl+alt+del is not handled. However, synergy can convert ctrl+alt+pause into ctrl+alt+del on the client side. (Synergy must be configured to autostart when the computer starts on the client for this to work on the Windows NT family.) Some non-standard keys may not work, especially "multimedia" buttons, though several are correctly handled.

- A screen can be its own neighbor. That allows a screen to "wrap". For example, if a configuration linked the left and right sides of a screen to itself then moving off the left of the screen would put the mouse at the right of the screen and vice versa.

- You cannot switch screens when the Scroll Lock is toggled on. Use this to prevent unintentional switching. You can configure other hot keys to do this instead; see lockCursorToScreen.

- Turn off mouse driven virtual desktop switching on X windows. It will interfere with synergy. Use keyboard shortcuts instead.

- Synergy's screen saver synchronization works best with xscreensaver under X windows. Synergy works better with xscreensaver if it is using one of the screen saver extensions. Prior to xscreensaver 4.0 you can use -mit-extension, -sgi-extension, or -xidle-extension command line options to enable an extension (assuming your server has the extension). Starting with 4.0 you must enable the corresponding option in your .xscreensaver file.

- Synergy automatically converts newlines in clipboard text (Unix expects \n to end each line while Windows expects \r\n).

- Clients can be started and stopped at any time. When a screen is not connected, the mouse will jump over that screen as if the mouse had moved all the way across it and jumped to the next screen.

- A client's keyboard and mouse are fully functional while synergy is running. You can use them in case synergy locks up.

- Strong authentication and encryption is available by using SSH. See the security guide for more information. Synergy does not otherwise provide secure communications and it should not be used on or over untrusted networks.

- Synergy doesn't work if a 16-bit Windows application has the focus on Windows 95/98/Me. This is due to limitations of Windows. One commonly used 16-bit application is the command prompt (command.exe) and this includes synergy's log window when running in test mode.