Run Synergy Automatically during login on a Mac

Synergy is a great program that let’s you share one keyboard and mouse across multiple computers. I’m using it to connect a mac to a PC.

I wanted the synergy server to be running on my mac automatically every time I login. This feature is a button-click in the gui version on the PC but there are some more involved instructions on the official site for accomplishing this on a mac but it required using a login hook (which I didn’t want to do). After some experimentation, here’s an alternative that uses a shell script, and an automator script to get the job done.

First, make a file called run_synergy.command and customize it to launch synergy with your arguments:


#!/bin/sh
prog=(/Applications/synergy/synergy-1.3.1/synergys -c /Applications/synergy/synergy-1.3.1/synergy.conf)

### Stop any currently running Synergy client
killall ${prog[0]##*/} >> /Applications/synergy/error_log 2>&1

### Start the new client
exec "${prog[@]}" >> /Applications/synergy/error_log 2>&1


As you can probably see, that will restart the server for you, keeping a log of what it’s doing in case you need to do some debugging.

Next, create a new workflow with Automator. The workflow will only have one item called “Run Shell Script” and it will simply point to the run_synergy.command file you’ve just created. Save that Automator script as an Application called “run_synergy”.

The final step is to visit Preferences->Accounts->Login Items and add the run_synergy Automator script you just created to the list.

You can [download the run_synergy automator application and script 123k zip. The download contains these files as I’ve described above if you’d rather not go through the steps yourself. Simply install both in /Applications/synergy/ and adjust the file run_synergy.command to taste. Enjoy.