Motivation

It is often necessary to use more than one computer at work, for example, there is a desktop computer with Linux system in the office, and another laptop computer with macOS For classes or meetings.Sometimes it is necessary to use these two computers at the same time to complete a certain task. At this time, switching back and forth with two sets of mice and keyboards will become a problem. It is very troublesome, Barrier is a free software that can share mouse and keyboard across multiple computers.

Introduction

In fact, the keyboard and mouse sharing software is not limited to the barrier, there are other Mouse Without Borders, Synergy, etc., but Mouse Without Borders is only available for Windows systems, while Synergy is a paid software.

Barrier is a software with the same source as Synergy.Originally Synergy was written based on Chris Schoeneman A free software developed by CosmoSynergy, Synergy began to charge after iterating several versions, so some teams started based on Synergy’s open source kernel has again developed a free version of the barrier.

Barrier is a free and open source cross-system keyboard and mouse sharing software. The main features are:

• Shared mouse and shared keyboard
• shared clipboard
• Across systems. Available for Windows, macOS and Linux systems
• Free, open source

Installation

Windows and macOS

There are already packaged installation packages for Windows and macOS systems, which can be downloaded from the release page of the Barrier open source GitHub repository: https://github.com/debauchee/barrier/releases.Select the installation package with the suffix exe for the Windows system, and select the installation package with the suffix dmg for the macOS system.

Linux

For Debian-based Linux systems (such as Ubuntu, etc.), you can directly use the package management tool apt to install:

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sudo apt install barrier

Other Linux systems can be installed through the package management tool snap:

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sudo snap install barrier

If the system does not come with snap, you need to install snap first.

Configuration and Usage

Barrier settings are divided into server and client.

Server

The computer directly connected to the keyboard and mouse is the server.

1. Open Barrier on the server computer and check Server.
2. Write down the IP address of the server (usually the LAN IP).
3. Tick Manually configure the server, and then click “Configure Server”.
4. Drag the computer icon on the upper right side of the configuration interface to the lower grid, double-click the computer icon, and change the computer name to the name displayed on the client computer (you can find it in the “screen name” column of the client barrier software interface).The relative position of the two computer icons in the grid corresponds to the screen position of the actual computer.

Client

The computer to use the keyboard and mouse of the server computer is the client.

1. Open Barrier on the client computer and check Client.
2. Fill in the IP address of the server in the server IP column (Server IP).If this column is not editable, uncheck “Auto config”.
3. Click “Barrier” on the Barrier menu bar, select “Change Settings”, make sure the network port (Port) used is 24800, and check “Enable SSL”.
4. Restart or reload (Reload) Barrier.

Common Issues

Make sure the server and client computers are on the same network.

If the mouse and keyboard cannot be shared successfully, you can check the above settings and restart the Barrier software.

If it still doesn’t work, you can click “Show Log” in the menu bar to view the error message in the log.