#inputleapon LiberaChat IRC network, for support with Input Leap.#inputleap-devon LiberaChat IRC network, for discussing development of Input Leap.
Input Leap is software that mimics the functionality of a KVM switch, which historically would allow you to use a single keyboard and mouse to control multiple computers by physically turning a dial on the box to switch the machine you're controlling at any given moment. Input Leap does this in software, allowing you to tell it which machine to control by moving your mouse to the edge of the screen, or by using a keypress to switch focus to a different system.
Input Leap was forked from Barrier in November 2021. At this time, Input Leap is in heavy development, and not ready for production use. We hope to release our first post-fork release (v3.0.0) very soon.
But for now, we advise sticking with Barrier v2.4.0/v2.3.4, and avoid building from Git - unless you're aware that building from Git may result in unexpected behaviour. Of course, testing is welcome.
At the moment, Input Leap is not compatible with Synergy.
Input Leap needs to be installed on all machines that will share keyboard and mouse.
Whereas Synergy has moved beyond its goals from the 1.x era, Input Leap aims to maintain that simplicity. Input Leap will let you use your keyboard and mouse from one computer to control one or more other computers.
Clipboard sharing is supported.
That's it.
Hassle-free reliability. We are users, too. Input Leap was created so that we could solve the issues we had with Synergy and then share these fixes with other users.
Compatibility. We use more than one operating system and you probably do, too. Windows, macOS, Linux, FreeBSD... Input Leap should "just work". We will also have our eye on Wayland when the time comes.
Communication. Everything we do is in the open. Our issue tracker will let you see if others are having the same problem you're having and will allow you to add additional information. You will also be able to see when progress is made and how the issue gets resolved.
- Install and run Input Leap on each machine that will be sharing.
- On the machine with the keyboard and mouse, make it the server.
- Click the "Configure server" button and drag a new screen onto the grid for each client machine.
- Ensure the "screen name" matches exactly (case-sensitive) for each configured screen -- the clients' Input Leap windows will tell you their screen names (just above the server IP).
- On the client(s), put in the server machine's IP address (or use Bonjour/auto configuration when prompted) and "start" them.
You should see Input Leap is running on both server and clients.
You should now be able to move the mouse between all the screens as if they were the same machine.
Note that if the keyboard's Scroll Lock is active then this will prevent the mouse from switching screens.
To find information about configuring Input Leap look at the wiki
Please be aware that the only way to draw our attention to a bug is to create a new issue in the issue tracker.
Always follow the template, it's there for a reason. Failure to do so will inevitably result in a delay in the issue being fixed!
Please also see the IRC channels at the top of the README for other methods of support.
At this time we are looking for developers to help fix the issues found in the issue tracker.
Submit pull requests once you've polished up your patch and we'll review and possibly merge it.
Most pull requests will need to include a release note.
See docs/newsfragments/README.md for documentation of how to do that.
While not a comprehensive list, repology provides a decent list of distro specific packages.
Q: Input Leap vs. barrier?
A: Input Leap is a fork of barrier, by barrier's active maintainers. See issue #1414 for more details. Currently, barrier is considered unmaintained.
Q: Does drag and drop work on linux?
A: No (see #855 if you'd like to change that)
Q: What OSes are supported?
Currently, Input Leap is in heavy development, and we hope to make our first post-fork release very soon. However, we wish to make clear that building from Git is prone to breaking changes and other bugs/issues. Our advice is to stick with Barrier v2.4.0/v2.3.4 for the time-being.
Q: How do I load my configuration on startup?
A: Start the binary with the argument
--config <path_to_saved_configuration>
Q: After loading my configuration on the client the field 'Server IP' is still empty!
A: Edit your configuration to include the server's ip address manually with
(...) section: options serverhostname=<AAA.BBB.CCC.DDD>
Q: Are there any other significant limitations with the current version of Input Leap?
A: Currently:
Input Leap currently has limited UTF-8 support; issues have been reported with processing various languages.
- (see #860)
There is interest in future support for the Wayland compositor/display server protocol (official site | Wikipedia article) on Linux.
The complete list of open issues can be found in the 'Issues' tab on GitHub. Help is always appreciated.