Share your Computer’s Mouse and Keyboard with your Steam Deck
I use an app called barrier. It allows you to share your mouse and keyboard with multiple devices. I use it, because I tend to have my laptop and Macbook sitting next to my PC, and it makes working across all devices very convenient. It’s a mix of a multi-monitor and multi-computer setup.
Concept
Your device with the peripherals runs in server mode and is aware of the screen configuration of all the devices around you. The other devices connect as clients. When you move the mouse across the screen boundaries, barrier will magically transport the cursor to the respective device, direct your keyboard input there, and share the clipboard between all devices.
Barrier Server Configuration
My main PC (named Battlestation, naturally 😎) is surrounded by other devices. I’ve added the Steam Deck to the right.
Barrier Client Install
I switched the Steam Deck itself to Desktop Mode (hold the power button). Then I used their “app store” (a GUI package manager), and installed the barrier client:
Launching Barrier Client on the Steam Deck
Since I had the mouse and keyboard connected, I tried just pressing the “Windows” (or Meta) key and started typing barrier. Look, nice, proper auto-completion.
Barrier Client Setup
On the first startup, it needs some configuration. Language, and client or server mode.
Connecting the Barrier Client
The client setup is simple, although auto-config doesn’t work in my case. The WiFi is on a different subnet, so I specified the IP of my PC manually.
Hit Start, and it will connect to the barrier server.
The mouse and keyboard are now shared. It’s pretty neat, now I can just move my PC mouse to the right edge of the screen, and it takes over the Steam Deck.
Clipboard Sharing
The cherry on top is that barrier also supports clipboard sharing. So you can copy from and paste to any device easily.
But here’s the rub: You have to press the shortcut native to the device. For example, if you’re on a Macbook, you’d press
CMD+C
to copy, but once the mouse is over on the Steam Deck, you’d have to paste with
CTRL+V
.
Depending on all the computers involved, it can get a bit weird. Okay, I’m on a Macbook with an external Mac keyboard, on a Remote Desktop of a Windows machine, running a Linux VM. Which key do I press to copy to the clipboard? That depends on which device you’re trying to copy data from.
But I digress. Now I can comfortably interact with the Steam Deck as part of my Desktop setup.
Hugo-Dz created Super Godot Galaxy: https://github.com/Hugo-Dz/super-godot-galaxy, which he announced in this Reddit post. It uses the 3D Starter Kit from Kenney and shows how to achieve the effect of applying gravity toward the center of a small spherical planet.
This release finally uses Godot Engine 4.4. It adds the GGCraftingSystem singleton and updates the GGInteractable2DStrategyCrafting class to use it. The crafting editor nodes now have prefixes, which makes it much easier to search for specific recipe or item nodes in larger crafting libraries. Some syntactic sugar was added as well. You can now easily …
Here’s a collection of tutorials that are helpful if you’re new to using Control and Container nodes to create UIs in Godot 4. The Game Dev Artisan video covers creating a simple UI with a reload indicator for a simple 2D tank game: Clear Code’s 11+ hour Ultimate Introduction to Godot 4 has a chapter …
A smaller update. The inventory components now have custom icons to make it easier to tell them apart. This release also includes additional bug fixes:
Share your Computer’s Mouse and Keyboard with your Steam Deck
I use an app called barrier. It allows you to share your mouse and keyboard with multiple devices. I use it, because I tend to have my laptop and Macbook sitting next to my PC, and it makes working across all devices very convenient. It’s a mix of a multi-monitor and multi-computer setup.
Concept
Your device with the peripherals runs in server mode and is aware of the screen configuration of all the devices around you. The other devices connect as clients. When you move the mouse across the screen boundaries, barrier will magically transport the cursor to the respective device, direct your keyboard input there, and share the clipboard between all devices.
Barrier Server Configuration
My main PC (named Battlestation, naturally 😎) is surrounded by other devices. I’ve added the Steam Deck to the right.
Barrier Client Install
I switched the Steam Deck itself to Desktop Mode (hold the power button). Then I used their “app store” (a GUI package manager), and installed the barrier client:
Launching Barrier Client on the Steam Deck
Since I had the mouse and keyboard connected, I tried just pressing the “Windows” (or Meta) key and started typing barrier. Look, nice, proper auto-completion.
Barrier Client Setup
On the first startup, it needs some configuration. Language, and client or server mode.
Connecting the Barrier Client
The client setup is simple, although auto-config doesn’t work in my case. The WiFi is on a different subnet, so I specified the IP of my PC manually.
Hit Start, and it will connect to the barrier server.
The mouse and keyboard are now shared. It’s pretty neat, now I can just move my PC mouse to the right edge of the screen, and it takes over the Steam Deck.
Clipboard Sharing
The cherry on top is that barrier also supports clipboard sharing. So you can copy from and paste to any device easily.
But here’s the rub: You have to press the shortcut native to the device. For example, if you’re on a Macbook, you’d press
CMD+Cto copy, but once the mouse is over on the Steam Deck, you’d have to paste withCTRL+V.Depending on all the computers involved, it can get a bit weird. Okay, I’m on a Macbook with an external Mac keyboard, on a Remote Desktop of a Windows machine, running a Linux VM. Which key do I press to copy to the clipboard? That depends on which device you’re trying to copy data from.
But I digress. Now I can comfortably interact with the Steam Deck as part of my Desktop setup.
Related Posts
Super Godot Galaxy Concept
Hugo-Dz created Super Godot Galaxy: https://github.com/Hugo-Dz/super-godot-galaxy, which he announced in this Reddit post. It uses the 3D Starter Kit from Kenney and shows how to achieve the effect of applying gravity toward the center of a small spherical planet.
Inventory System 2 Alpha 4 available
This release finally uses Godot Engine 4.4. It adds the GGCraftingSystem singleton and updates the GGInteractable2DStrategyCrafting class to use it. The crafting editor nodes now have prefixes, which makes it much easier to search for specific recipe or item nodes in larger crafting libraries. Some syntactic sugar was added as well. You can now easily …
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Here’s a collection of tutorials that are helpful if you’re new to using Control and Container nodes to create UIs in Godot 4. The Game Dev Artisan video covers creating a simple UI with a reload indicator for a simple 2D tank game: Clear Code’s 11+ hour Ultimate Introduction to Godot 4 has a chapter …
Inventory System v1.4 available
A smaller update. The inventory components now have custom icons to make it easier to tell them apart. This release also includes additional bug fixes: