Synergy 2 to Synergy 3 Upgrade

[IT Troll 22]

I've been running Synergy 2 Beta since it was first released and today upgraded to Synergy 3 Beta. I thought I would share my upgrade experience. On my Windows 10 PC the upgrade went well, no issues other than the installer had a bit of a lengthy pause before it started the process.

On my Mac computer (macOS 12.6.3) things didn't go so smoothly. I set the installer going at which point it asked if I wanted to replace the existing version, I said yes. I saw the dock and system tray icons update but then nothing else appeared. After waiting a while I launched the Synergy app, at which point it displayed the animation about the Privacy settings and in front of that prompted for my password to make changes to the system. I entered my password fine, but then I found my Mac keyboard did not respond and whilst I had a moving mouse pointer, clicks weren't being registered. Kind of like the issue described here, but worse. At this point the privacy settings hadn't been set and the link between the computers wasn't established.

After a bit of head scratching, I used the PC to SSH to the Mac and killed the synergy-service process. As soon as I did this the keyboard and mouse started to function again. I could then set the privacy settings, activate my install and the link was established automatically.

Since then it has been working mostly fine. I have however made some initial observations:

• Login screen control working on Mac. 👍
• Whilst Copy/Paste is working fine from Windows to Mac, it is not working from Mac to Windows. This was the same with Synergy 2. I have read that this is still known to be unreliable, which is disappointing after all these years.
• It doesn't seem to be possible to auto-switch the controlling keyboard/mouse. This was a useful feature of Synergy 2.
• If the PC mouse is in control and I move the Mac mouse, screen elements are highlighted on the Mac desktop but there is no mouse pointer. If I do the reverse, the mouse pointer is displayed on the Windows desktop.
• Mac does not wake when waking the Windows PC by mouse movement.

Edited April 11 by IT Troll

[IT Troll 22]

Just updated my Synergy Beta 3 installs to the latest release.

Windows worked seamlessly. macOS first claimed that the installer was corrupt, but installed OK on the second attempt, however it failed to start the daemon process. A manual restart fixed it.

Copy/Paste still only works in one direction.

Edited May 23 by IT Troll

[IT Troll 22]

Just updated my Synergy Beta 3 installs again to the latest release. Same story as above.

Windows worked seamlessly. macOS first claimed that the installer was corrupt, but installed OK on the second attempt, however it failed to start the daemon process. A manual restart fixed it.

macOS installer needs more work before it is released for real.