Using laptop as a second programming monitor

Question

The joys of multimonitor programming are countless, I think there are about 5 blog posts on Coding Horror on the topic alone! I often code in Windows on my main machine, and have my Mac laptop set up to the side. I use the Mac both to compile Mac builds but also as my "reference web browser". There's no KVM or anything.

However a casual conversation at a conference led me to the question, could I use two independent machines to share windows? Literally move some windows from one machine to another, so I could use one PC's display as "overflow" from the other.

Some googling suddenly shows that this is possible in some situations for sure:

Synergy and Maxivista

My question is whether any programmers have tried such a setup. We have unique needs especially with multiple text windows and editors, and this kind of tool may be a huge win or a huge hassle.

This solution feels like a combination of easy KVM switching AND multiple monitors.. it sounds like a programming dream! So advice or especially reports of actual experience in a programming environment would be greatly useful before I invest in the rather complex setup.

Followup: Sounds like I'm asking for something that doesn't exist! It's kind of combination of a software KVM and VNC. But the VNC would need to break out the app windows and allow individual manipulation (like that maxivista commercial tool, which is Vista only).

Thanks for all the feedback. Looks like there's demand for a cool app if anyone has the drive to be first in this new nich!

Necrology

Answer 1

Synergy doesn't allow you to move windows between machines (that would require a silly amount of work behind the scenes), but it does allow you to share a keyboard and mouse between two machines so they "appear" to be all one machine, but actually run separately.

I personally use Input Director, as I found it more stable than Synergy. I have my laptop with an external monitor to the right, and my desktop to the left as an Input Director slave. My desktop runs a different O/S and is basically my guinea pig box for testing stuff and for anything I need to keep running when I leave the office. Cut + paste is pretty seamless, so I can quite happily fire up an RDP session to a server on my desktop, and cut+paste SQL scripts from that to my laptop.

It's a very useful thing to have if you have a few physical boxes and monitors kicking around :)

Kuenlun

Input Director looks good, but it won't connect his Mac and Windows machines. It's only for two Windows systems. – Orphism

Of course if won't, I was just posting my experiences of similar tech to synergy. – Kuenlun

Answer 2

I've actually managed to use spare notebook as a second monitor to Desktop PC. This allows to move windows to second PC, but not vise-versa.

Solution would work basically with any OS.

The only requirement is a spare VGA (or DVI-I/DVI-A) port on server PC.

1. Make a dummy VGA plug http://www.overclock.net/t/384733/the-30-second-dummy-plug This will also work for DVI-I/DVI-A port + DVI-VGA adapter
2. Detect virtual monitor with your OS. Monitor will be detected as very generic monitor, so you can set up any resolution. Set it to slave PC resolution.
3. Use any remote control software to connect from slave to server PC. Set it to display only "virtual" monitor.

That's all. Your slave PC is a second monitor for server PC.

I've used this on Windows 7 + TeamViewer. I've additionally set up Mouse Without Borders (Microsoft Synergy analog) to be able to use slave PC with same mouse&keyboard, though this is not required if you intend to transform it to monitor-only.

Bookstand

Answer 3

Xdmx - Distributed Multihead X Project (linux only)

Provides native X display on external machines, no VNC cons.

Demaggio

Answer 4

The following is not exactly what you want, but pretty close:

You can start a VNC server on the Windows machine, which will let you "export" its graphical screen.

Then, unplug the monitor from the Windows machine and use it as external laptop monitor instead, with your Mac laptop.

There, on your Mac, you just connect to the VNC session using Chicken of the VNC, which will give you the graphical screen content of the Windows machine as a Mac window (interactively, so you can actually control the windows machine as if you were working on it directly). You can put that on the external monitor, and you can also put other windows there, so you really have a shared environment.

I believe this solution also lets you copy and paste content from the Windows screen to Mac windows and vice versa.

Orphism

On Windows, you can even add an external virtual second monitor and tell VNC server to show only its contents. – Tulatulip

Answer 5

I use MaxiVista on WinXP while programming. It works fantastically and lets me add a third screen to my multi-monitor configuration.

Organize

Answer 6

There is hope, here for windows users: http://virtualmonitor.github.io/ Looks like a work-in-progress and only supports windows 2000 - windows 7, but he's looking for help with windows 7 - 8.

Fourteen

Answer 7

Unfortunately, synergy doesn't allow moving windows across screens currently. It only forwards mouse&keyboard events from one set of physical devices to different computers.

Pronunciation

Answer 8

Yes, and I love it. It allows you get past 2 screens on a laptop, and really I find 3 a great amount.

If your main machine is a Mac you want ScreenRecycler. You can then use monitors on other Mac, Windows, and Linux machines (anything with a VNC client). You will want something better than the Mac's crappy windows management though. I suggest Many Tricks' Moom and Witch.

On Windows, as @LachlanG said, MaxiVista works great. And it supports adding monitors from Windows, Mac, and Linux machines.

Portamento

Answer 9

I am reusing my old laptop as a second monitor to see the live preview while coding. I am using SpaceDesk, which is free.

Tulatulip

Answer 10

I use barrier and open source fork of synergy. Its a little hard to use but works really well. (To find it just search google for 'barrier github').

Anoint