Control Multiple Macs with Teleport

Sitting on my ridiculously wide desk I have my iMac, a Dell widescreen monitor, and my MacBookPro all up and running. I have one keyboard, one mouse, and they’re the only ones I need. And no, I don’t use the MBP’s built-in keyboard / trackpad.

In the past you would have needed specialized equipment or some mind-numbingly difficult to use software to accomplish such a feat. Now, we have Teleport – the simple, graphical way to share your cursor and keyboard.

This will be a short post simply because Teleport is so easy to install and use. Before you begin there are some requirements to effectively use Teleport on your Macs.

• You need at least two Macs. Obviously.
• The two (or more) Macs need to be operating on the same network (including wireless/wired networks).
• You need to possess the ability to double click.

Done.

After downloading, installing and activating Teleport on each Mac you’d like to control you should be off and running. To switch between monitors simply move your cursor off the side of your current monitor in the direction of your other monitor. Once the cursor reaches the edge it will be transferred to the next monitor over, while a bevel will be laid over the master’s monitor indicating which secondary screen is using the cursor/keyboard.

If you’re worried about accidentally moving your cursor over to the wrong screen, getting annoyed and then uninstalling Teleport, don’t worry it’s got you covered. Users can set additional controls regarding when the control of the cursor/keyboard can be transfered. You can set either a slight delay between when the cursor reaches the edge of the screen and the transfer; or set a key that must be held down in order for the transfer to take place.

Teleport also gives you the option of transferring clipboard contents between linked Macs. It also allows for a filter that will disable the clipboard transfer when the clipboard contains more than a certain amount of data. More than just clipboard sharing, Teleport lets you drag and drop files between linked Macs. Be careful with these settings as they can slow you down when transferring large files or a very large clipboard.

I can also tell what one of the first comments will be on this post: “But, Synergy does all that too, plus it works on Windows, Linux, OS X, my TI-86 and the neighbors dog! That’s true. My problem with Synergy was how difficult it was to install and maintain. Yes, there is a GUI available to install Synergy, but again, I never had any luck with it. Teleport is a simple, elegant solution that anyone can use.

Teleport is available as a preview release, and is available for free, but if you use it I would suggest a donation for the author.

I noticed Derek Punsalan has a detailed article up today covering all of the various multi-Mac solutions in depth.

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