Synergy Would Like Me To Buy a Worse Version Please

Wednesday, February 12, 2025

So I’m taking the advice of one of my favorite creators at the moment, Ed Zitron, to take a bit here to write about software that, while useful, has gotten measurably worse over time, though also for a side of hilarity, has demanded I pay to access a newer version that I definitely, 100%, cannot overemphasize enough that I don’t want. Which is funny in the cosmic sort of way to me.

Along the way I’ll be explaining why what it does is so great, why the new version fails on it’s face to accomplish the same thing, and at the end I’ll go find out if you can actually buy the old (working) version or not. I hope for your sake you can.

Our Subject - Synergy

Synergy is an app I bought one eternity ago, genuinely I don’t remember when, I want to say when I was at my previous job and working a stint of needing my Windows laptop an unfortunate amount of the time, probably ballpark 2018. It does exactly what it says on the tin; it lets you use one mouse/keyboard combo to control multiple computers.

Protip: Always use the Mac peripherals. Windows seems to be better about letting accessibility features control the mouse more smoothly than Mac does, and I don’t think that’s anything Synergy’s devs are doing wrong, I think that’s just system architecture.</digression>

It works in the following way: You have a server machine which accepts connections and has the actual keyboard and mouse you’d like to use, and you have clients which connect to it. Your server then has a UI you can use to arrange machines much like one would in the Displays settings for Macs and PCs. You move your mouse to the edge of the screen and viola; your mouse moves to the other machine and your keyboard input now goes to that other machine instead of the server. Move it back, it moves back. Very intuitive, very good, and Synergy 1 accomplishes this quite handily.

It’s a bit old school relying on IP addresses in your local network, but for those of us who came from the halcyon days of the early Internet, where networking computers in your own home with name resolution was a fantasy at best, this is a pretty standard affair, and one easily addressed with DHCP reservations.

It even lists your IP address there, in the UI, which you can then type into the prospective client and get hooked up so easily.

So How Did They Ruin It?

So, like I said I used this for a good spell in 2018-2019, then ended up not really needing it for awhile and fell off. However eventually, I had a need for a similar application, did a similar search, then had one of those “Didn’t I buy this already?” kind of moments and a quick password reset later, I was back in. But now, it was Synergy 3! By virtue of having purchased Synergy 1 way back, I earned a free trial of Synergy 3. Or maybe it was just a free trial, I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. I downloaded, I used. It was largely the same, except now the interface was Modern™. Which is to say, big blocks of color and I’m 99% sure written in JavaScript.

Gone now are IP addresses too, replaced with “detection.” I haven’t cared enough to Wireshark this to figure out if it’s phoning home and looking for other computers that have phoned home from the same account and location, or just port-scanning your network, but in any case, it seemed to work. I installed the app on both my Mac and PC, they found each other, I picked which one would be the server, and all was well.

… for awhile.

However in short order I was having issues. Shock of shocks, the “auto detection” didn’t work terribly well. I struggle to think of an auto-detection that isn’t Apple-made that works well, but nevertheless, it didn’t. I found myself repeatedly restarting it on both machines trying to no avail to get them to see one another. Various online resources recommend restarting your WiFi to address this, but I’m not fucking doing that, because I shouldn’t have to. End of story.

Paradoxically, they have settings for picking your network device but not just connecting via IP address. It’s such an odd mix of technical and non-technical and I can’t parse why on Earth it was done this way.

Then I got this:

I put in my serial in the odd event that the old one would work, or perhaps get me a discount, but to no avail. However what it did tell me was that I could still download and use Synergy 1.

Aside: I have no clue what happened to Synergy 2. Maybe I only get links to download Synergy 1 because I bought it?

So I logged into my account on their website, navigated past the download page that advertises Synergy 3 to the “Other versions” page, found Synergy 1 and selected it, scrolled a second time past an advertisement for Synergy 3, downloaded it, and activated it. And friends, let me tell you: This is marvelous. Not only do we get dark mode on the Mac by default, because this app was presumably built with an older version of Cocoa which Apple reskins behind the scenes, but it’s SO. MUCH. FASTER. Not only is the software itself faster, but the experience of using it is too. Instead of massive buttons, bars and blocks that go nowhere, we get regular sized buttons, with input fields that immediately register as input fields. And, best of all, no fucking autodetection that breaks or requires troubleshooting. Sure, sometimes I have to update IP addresses, but that’s a nothing task. It takes seconds and then the service is off to the races.

So, thank you Synergy for locking my license to the old version of the software. You know, the one that works. I’m a happy Synergy 1 user and I will stay that way as long as is possible to do so.

Ending on a High Note

I did promise I’d check if you can buy Synergy 1, and the answer is no but yes. Your purchase of Synergy 3 includes access to Synergy 1, which while hella convenient given Synergy 3 doesn’t work, does also feel like a tacit admission that they know that it doesn’t work and therefore are still keeping the old version up and accessible. It also begs even more questions as to what happened to Synergy 2, which increasingly feels like that weird uncle nobody in the family talks about.

Anyway, you can buy it here for $30 if you’re so inclined. I do reccomend it, it has no issues at all on Windows 11 and the newest MacOS. And who knows, maybe someday they’ll come out with Synergy 4, and bring back just using bloody IP addresses to augment their not-auto-non-detection.

That’s all for now, till next!

- Madison