Synergy on Mac OS X 10.7

Question

Unfortunately, I can't seem to get Synergy to work between two Mac clients both using 10.7. One is an older 21" iMac and the other is a new 2011 Macbook Air. Here's my synergy.conf, symlinked to my home directory as ~/.synergy.conf

section: screens
    foo:
    bar:
        super = alt
        alt = super
end

section: links
    foo:
        right = bar
    bar:
        left = foo
end

That is, I thought the super = alt trick was mandatory in order to have alt work on Mac but unfortunately, nothing really works. Both the Command and Control keys do NOT work on bar but work fine on foo given that the keyboard is paired with that screen. The keyboard modifier keys are the same on both computers and the making the mouse go between screens works as well.

I was wondering if anyone else had any success or problems running into this issue on 10.7 and was hoping there was a possible fix.

Answer 1

For anyone coming to this question because of OSX Lion/Mountain Lion + launchd/startup items/LoginHook issues, I have a solution that helped me.

SynergyKM on OSX *Lion is unreliable. Furthermore, I was never able to get my synergy client working via any of the ways outlined at http://synergy2.sourceforge.net/autostart.html. What I did was write a shell script and then converted that script into a Mac Application with Platypus.

Here are the exact steps I followed:

MacPorts Synergy

There are known issues with the latest synergy version's compatibility with OSX Lion so we get the compatible version (1.3) from MacPorts.

1. Open Terminal
2. If you don't have it already, install MacPorts
3. Once MacPorts is installed, do a "sudo port install synergy".
4. At the command line do a "which synergyc" to make sure it points to "/usr/bin/synergyc"
5. From the command line execute a "synergyc --version" to ensure it's version 1.3

Shell Script

1. Create a "bin" directory under your user directory
2. Write your shell script
3. Replace the synergy server address (my synergy server IP address is 192.168.0.30) with the IP address of your synergy server. (Using the IP address ensures the client can accurately find the server.)
4. Save and exit
5. Execute "chmod 755 synergy.sh"

Shell script code:

#!/bin/sh
SYNERGYC=/usr/bin/synergyc

if ! ps axco command | grep -q "^synergyc\$"
then
    $SYNERGYC -n $(hostname -s) -1 -f 192.168.0.30 
else
    echo "synergyc already running."
fi

Platypus

1. Install Platypus
2. Open
3. App Name: "Synergy"
4. Script Type: "Shell" @ /bin/sh
5. Script Path: /Users/[your osx username]/bin/synergy.sh
6. Output: Progress Bar
7. Keep the other generated properties as-is
8. Click the "Create" button
9. Select where to output the Synergy.app

Tying It All Together

Now that you have a fully functional Mac application, do the following steps to finish your automatic synergy client setup.

9. Open "System Preferences"
10. Open "Users & Groups"
11. Go to the user for which you want to add synergyc startup
12. Click the "Login Items" button
13. Click the "+" button to add the "Synergy.app" app you created with Platypus
14. Logout and log back in to ensure synergcy starts up right away.
15. You are DONE!

Answer 2

How about using Quick Synergy? I have it works on Mac OSX 10.7.1 and Windows 7. If you have 2 Mac I think you don't even need to setup the keys binding. My Procedure