Kvm-switch Alternatives

kvm-switch reviews and mentions

• Two computers, one monitor, zero fiddling – Alex Plescan
  7 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 18 May 2026

  I went down a similar rabbit hole a while back and ended up building something that attacks the same problem from the opposite direction: instead of a hardware box that switches everything (video + USB), I wrote Fence[1], a software layer that automates switching USB input devices when you glide the mouse to the edge of the screen.

  The idea is basically "Synergy's convenience, but with real hardware switching." You run a tiny client on each machine. When your cursor hits the left edge of your desktop, Fence tells a USB and HDMI Switch to physically redirect your keyboard and mouse to the next PC.

  The switching happens in hardware and you can design your layout per-direction and per-device.

  Where the L1T KVM is the "one box handles video and IO beautifully" approach, Fence is more of an "IO routing layer" that lets you keep your existing monitors and their auto-input-switching (or a separate video path).

  I built it specifically to be cross-platform. You don't pass clicks/keystrokes over the network, just a "switch to pc2 PC, left edge" message.

  Not a replacement for the L1T if you want one-button video+peripheral switching, but if someone likes their monitor's own input handling and just wants the "mouse to edge" workflow it's a nice middle ground.

  I like the fact that moving the mouse to different edges of the screen can show exactly the source to the sink that I want.

  I originally built it for live streaming with OBS, but now, I miss it when I have more than one computer I need to deal with at a time.

    [1] https://github.com/timgws/kvm-switch

• Show HN: Multi-monitor KVM using just a USB switch
  9 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 10 Feb 2024

  With my COVID obsession of live streaming while writing code, I ended up building something a little more elaborate. https://github.com/timgws/kvm-switch

  It doesn't use DDC commands direct to the monitor(s), instead swapping it for a HDMI matrix combined with a traditional KVM for swapping around inputs smoothly when you roll your mouse over the edge of different operating systems.

  The switching client runs on Windows, MacOS and Linux (if you use X).

• Displayport: A Better Video Interface
  3 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 11 Jul 2023

  I had the same issue with this device. I ended up writing some code that you could run on a machine to operate the switching via the RS232 port: https://github.com/timgws/kvm-switch/

  Bonus for adding 'glide and switch' functionality, so you can move the mouse to the edge of the screen and it would jump the input to the next display in your layout. It's like a hardware version of Synergy.

  Very finicky device, but if you don't touch it - and you don't use any of the shortcuts - it works.

• Ask HN: What is something you built but never marketed?
  26 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 14 Aug 2022

  The proverb 'necessity is the mother of invention' made me build a solution for sharing a keyboard and mouse between multiple devices.

  Synergy/Barrier is not horrible, but I find the latency a little painful.

  Ended up getting an industrial HDMI switch, with a KVM. Built a server in Go that connects to the serial port of all the devices.

  A companion client that runs on all the machines tells the server when the mouse moves to the edge of the screen, so the USB inputs can be switched to the correct computer. Basically, it allows you to have multiple computers connected, to multiple displays, sharing one keyboard and mouse. (You can define layouts on the server, so the displays can move around on the matrix HDMI switcher).

  https://github.com/timgws/kvm-switch

• Show HN: Send commands to KVM/HDMI matrix devices when touching screen edge
  1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 5 Jun 2022
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