Synergy roadmap - Upcoming features

Wayland support for Linux

Why isn't it done yet?

Wayland is designed around a security philosophy that excludes software like Synergy by design. So, they need to make special exceptions to allow software like Synergy to work. We tired implementing Wayland support for Synergy many times, and it has cost us a lot of development time.

Because the Wayland API is constantly evolving and is still quite young, we have faced different security related challenges each time we tried to implement Wayland support.

However, there is hope! A Wayland library called libei has been developed which actually mentions Synergy a lot, hinting that this is the special exception we’ve been waiting for.

Please rest assured that Wayland support is very important to us, and we will continue trying to implement it.

Any workarounds?

Yes, most distros (e.g. Ubuntu) make it very easy to switch back to X for this exact reason; many programs do not fully support Wayland yet: How to switch back to X on Ubuntu

What is Wayland?

First, a bit of background: X.Org Server is the free and open-source implementation of the X Window System display server stewarded by the X.Org Foundation. Implementations of the client-side X Window System protocol exist in the form of X11 libraries, which serve as helpful APIs for communicating with the X server. We'll just say X from here...

There's a new Linux display manager that is set to replace X, which has been the de facto Linux desktop manager for as long as most people can remember!

Wayland is the new display protocol for Linux/Unix-like, set to replace X. Sadly, as of 2023, Wayland is incompatible with Synergy. Right now, many people have to choose: Synergy or Wayland. A lot of people are very unhappy about this.

Since Wayland is the way forward and X is being phased out, we are committed to doing everything we can to make Synergy work with Wayland. But, this depends on Wayland. Wayland needs to actually add support for apps like Synergy. The future does look promising, as Wayland community is now discussing Synergy support in the Wayland libei library. The Wayland libei library was created to add Emulated Input to Wayland, and is primarily aimed at the Wayland stack. The Wayland libei library even mentions Synergy nine times, which certainly sounds promising.

Multi-touch gesture support for macOS

‍Multi-Touch gestures were introduced to the Mac in 2012. So why haven't we added support for them yet? Well, this may or may not be possible depending on whether or not Apple provides the functionality to share gestures. So far, as of 2017, none of our competitors have achieved this, but that's no excuse and we do feel your pain. We do plan on investigating the possibility of gestures, but it will depend on the capabilities of the operating system.

Auto-update and one-click update all

A major pain point for our customers is updating. To update, you have to download and run the installer individually on each of your computers, and sometimes you even have to dig out your physical mouse and keyboards and plug them back in.

What would be great, is if you could either automatically (when the computer is idle) or manually click once to trigger the update of all computers simultaneously. Therefore, best case: you don't need to do anything at all (it's all automatic and in the background). And worst case: you need to click once, on only one of your computers and your entire system is updated for you (also in the background).

Easier layout editing for large setups

Synergy 3 introduces a grid-free screen layout, but still limits you to a relatively small number of screens due to the size of the window.

There are two ways that we plan to solve this. Simply by allowing you to resize the window to give yourself more real estate to edit the screen layout. The second way we're improving our screen editor is to add a pan and zoom feature, for people who are trying to edit their layout on a smaller screen. Being able to zoom in and out, would allow you to potentially manage an infinite number of screens.

Re-introduce Raspberry Pi OS support

Synergy 3 introduced many new great features, but unfortunately we had to temporarily take some things out such as Raspberry Pi OS support. This was due to the slightly different build requirements needed for Raspberry Pi OS. We believe it should be possible to re-introduce Raspberry Pi OS support, and we plan to do this in the near future. For the meantime, customers are still able to use Synergy 1.

Copy and paste files between computers

While you can indeed copy the contents of a file (i.e. text and images) between your computers in Synergy right now (known as clipboard sharing), you actually can't copy and paste an actual file between your computers.

We plan to add a feature in Synergy where you can, for example, right click a file and copy the file from one computer, then move your cursor to another computer and paste. It's likely that we'll implement this feature around the same time as when we re-implement the file drag and drop feature (which is currently experimental and doesn't work very well), because the code is very similar.

Drag and drop files between computers

In Synergy 1, for a brief time (between around 1.6 and 1.9) you could drag and drop files between your Windows and Mac computers. There were a few caveats, such as only being able to drop files to the desktop. It was also quite unreliable. Admittedly this feature was actually a prototype which then, unfortunately, fell into disrepair (to the point where it mostly stopped working). This feature is technically still in the code as an experimental feature, but is disabled by default.

Our plan is to restore the file drag and drop feature by fixing the bugs that stopped it working, eventually moving on to a full rewrite, including Linux support.

Screen positioning and complex screen layouts

In Synergy 3, we added support for screens layouts that go beyond a standard grid (as seen in Synergy 1), but we still need to take one more step. Synergy treats all of your monitors as one big screen, which causes issues when they're in complex configurations relative to each other.

Our solution to this will be to show all screens for each computer on the config screen, meaning that for each computer you'll see multiple screens (if you have multiple screens). This will allow you to position your screens exactly where you need them (no more screen grid).

Configuration profiles/groups for different setups

Some customers tend to have multi-computer setups in different locations. Maybe you take your laptop to work and use it next to your workstation, then when you go home, you set your laptop down by your gaming rig. Whatever the use case, Synergy doesn't play nice with multiple locations using the same config. One workaround is to reconfigure every time you move between work and home, but is this seamless? Not really.

So, to solve this, we'll introduce multiple configuration profiles; a separate configuration for each location so you can have different layouts depending on where you are.

Scriptable API for software developers

Wouldn't it be great if you could write some JavaScript or a Python script which is triggered by an event in Synergy? For example, when your mouse leaves the screen edge, or when pressing a certain key combination, etc. Or, maybe you can send Synergy a command and leverage the existing power of your multi-computer system.

We're not entirely sure what our users will come up with, but it could be great.

Auto-switch the primary computer

Synergy 3 makes it much easier than before to select which computer is the primary; the computer where your mouse and keyboard is shared from. But, what if this could be done automatically?

We plan to introduce a feature where just moving your mouse or pressing a key will switch that computer to be the primary computer, so you won't have to manually select it. This feature will be useful for people who still want keyboards and mice connected to all computers, but don't want to think about which computer should share it's keyboard and mouse; it will just happen.

But what if you don't want this to be automatic? Sometimes, you may want to lock a certain computer as the primary. We think that adding a locking option could be useful if someone is borrowing your laptop, or if you're regularly sharing computers between different people.

Sync your screensaver on all computers

The screensaver sync is a popular feature which used to work really well in Synergy 1. Screensavers are still used by many people, but have fallen out of popularity with the majority of people. Sadly, the screensaver sync feature doesn't work as well as it once did.

We may well re-implement screensaver sync in future versions and restore the feature to its original stability. This will be different to the lock screen sync feature.

Sync the lock screen on all computers

How cool would it be if locking one of your computers locked all the others? And wouldn't be even cooler if when you unlock your computer, it unlocks all the others too! Of course, for some this may be a security risk, so it'll be an optional feature.

We believe that while the implementation is a sizeable technical challenge, it's possible. This will save you time, afford better security, and save you the embarrassment of being wallpaper pranked, or worse.

Cursor wrap around at screen edge

Some customers have a ton of screens. Sometimes more than four in a row! This creates an annoying problem: you can't move from the far right screen to the far left screen in one swift mouse movement (and vice versa).

We plan to add a feature where you can teleport your cursor from the far right screen edge to the far left edge (also vice versa). Technically, this is already possible with a custom config, but we need to make this feature easier to access by adding an easy to use GUI setting.

Wake-on-LAN (WOL) for sleeping computers

Most computers come with energy saving settings enabled by default, meaning your computer will go to sleep after a number of minutes to save power.

We plan on adding a feature for this scenario. When you resume one computer or try to mouse over to a sleeping computer, it'll automatically resume all the other computers using something called Wake-on-LAN (WOL), which wakes your computer up using the network connection.

Share audio from one computer to another

Screen sharing apps such TeamViewer are commonly able to share sound from one computer to another. This is a feature that many customers have now come to expect.

We plan on bringing this feature to Synergy so that you can do the same, mixing all of your computers' sound into one audio output. Until then, you can always use two digital audio USB devices to share sound between your computers.

Auto-disable when running certain apps

Some apps don't play well with Synergy. Games are a good example of this. Because games use the mouse and keyboard input in a very different way to Synergy, conflicts can happen, and a game may behave strangely (full-screen mode breaks, the cursor goes crazy, etc). To solve this, the user must disable Synergy before starting a game, and then re-enable it when they want to go back into work mode.

Wouldn't it be better if Synergy simply disables itself when an incompatible app (like a full-screen video game) is running? You'd be able to customize exactly which apps caused Synergy to auto-disable when they start.

Mirror a folder on all of your computers

Windows file sharing has evolved into a difficult to use, unpopular feature. It’s been supplanted by cloud sharing because that’s what the mass market wants. Sadly, this leaves us multi-computer users to come up with our own custom solutions (such as setting up a file share or by using a NAS).

Wouldn’t it be neat if Synergy allowed you to easily share a folder to all of your other computers? We're not talking about on-demand copying of single files, but a shared folder that is easily accessible by you on any of your computers that synchronizes over the your LAN (not the cloud).