About Input Director
Input Director is a Windows application that lets you control multiple
Windows systems using the keyboard/mouse attached to one computer. It is
designed for folks who have two (or more) computers set up at home and find
themselves regularly sliding from one system to the other (and wearing out
the carpet in the process!). With Input Director, you can share a single
keyboard/mouse across a set of systems. You switch which system receives the
input either by hotkey or by moving the cursor so that it transitions from
one screen to the other (in a very similar fashion to a multi-monitor setup).
The idea being that you can position the monitors from two or more systems in
a row and use a shared keyboard/mouse to control all of them.
Input Director also supports a "shared" clipboard, in which you can copy
data onto the clipboard on one system, transition across to another and
paste.
Input Director requires Windows 2000 (Service Pack 4), Windows XP (Service
Pack 2), Windows 2003 or Windows Vista. The systems must be networked.
Donate
Input Director is and always will be free for personal non-commercial use. However, if you would like to support the development of Input Director, you are welcome to make a donation via Paypal.
Latest News
28th May 2008
Input Director v1.1 is now available for download.
- Slaves can be vertically positioned
- Improvements to reliability to minimise false 'slave is unavailable, do you want to skip?' occurrences
- 5th mouse button now functional on slaves
- On request to shutdown by a Master, a slave can now be configured to either do nothing, go to standby, hibernate or shutdown
- Synchronisation of Keyboard LEDs can be switched off
- A preferred network interface can be selected for Input Director communications
- Permitting Screen edge transitions can be turned off and on via configurable hotkeys on the system being directed
- New hotkeys can be setup to switch to the system above and below the current
- When hotkeying back and forth to a system, the cursor can optionally not be re-centered
- The 'Main' tab now displays the hostname and ip address of its system. The ip address reflects the 'preferred network interface' choice
- The master marking a slave as unavailable as part of its background activities can now be optionally switched off
- Fixed a bug in which the cursor sometimes reappeared in the bottom-right corner on the master
- Fixed a bug in the screensaver synchronisation logic in which if the master switched from screensaver to standby the slaves screensavers would deactivate
- Slave preferences have been relocated to the 'Slave Configuration' tab
- Various minor bug fixes and improvements
I'd like to thank the following volunteers for kindly giving their time to beta testing v1.1:
Blackflare,
Merijn Bosma,
Freilantzer,
Frank Gerrits,
Martin Jost,
Andrew Matthews,
Athena Poseidon,
Derek Reynolds,
Tim Rogers,
Erik Sluiters
and Dustin Wyatt.
23rd March 2008
Input Director v1.0.9 BETA is now available.
- A new 'background slave mode' allows the control of a slave system prior to login and across all users logged into the slave system. More information on this feature can be found here
- Windows fast user switching can now be used on a slave under Input Director control
- The Keyboard LEDs on the master keyboard reflect the status of the caps, numlock, scroll lock of the system being controlled
- Improved support for multiple masters controlling a single slave
- Mouse preferences (speed, acceleration) set on the Master Windows system can be applied when controlling a slave
- IP Addresses entered as slave hostnames are handled purely as ip addresses and not hostnames
- A handy 'Shutdown all Slaves and Master' option is available on the right-click menu on the Master system
- Fixed problem in which when running Windows Remote Desktop (RDP), the keyboard input sometimes remained with the master instead of being sent to the slave
- Fixed problem where the master incorrectly rejects a slave as being unauthorised
- Fixed problem where transitioning to a slave fails
- Numerous minor bug fixes and enhancements
14th March 2008
Douglas Bowie has kindly setup and is moderating a public google group for discussion/help/tips about Input Director.
Head over here and have a look!.
To kick things off I have posted information on some of the new features in the next version.
30th Jan 2008
Input Director v1.0.8.2 is now available.
- Fixed problem where a slave was not always able to communicate back to the master
- Fixed problem where right-clicking on the ID icon sometimes caused the Toolbar pop-up menu to appear
- Fixed Alt-Tab freezing problem on Windows XP slaves
- Added menu item to the right-context menu to lock all slaves and the master
18th Jan 2008
Input Director v1.0.8 is now available.
New features include:
- Input Director can control a locked slave
- Input Director can control the UAC dialog box on a Vista slave
- Slaves and the master can display a semi-transparent informational
window that indicates which system currently has the cursor
- Can simulate Ctrl-Alt-Delete on a slave system
- Can synchronise locking some or all slaves with the Master
- Can synchronise a slave's screensaver with the Master's
- Can shutdown all (or a subset of) slaves from the Master
- Hotkeys can be used to relative jump to the next left or right
system
- Can assign a key(s) that must be depressed for the cursor to transition
between systems
- Cursor can wrap-around from the far right system to the far left and
vice-versa
- Macros can be set to playback (broadcast) to all slaves, all systems or
all systems but the one with focus
- Can opt to hide the cursor on a slave when transitioning away from
it
- Improved support for Vista
- Numerous bug fixes
- Improved usability
More information on some of the new features can be found in the
Using Input Director section in the Quickstart guide.
Contact me if you find any bugs or have an idea
for a new feature you would like.
10th Nov 2007
Input Director v1.0.7 BETA is now available.
New features include:
- Mirror input mode - Mouse and keyboard input is simultaneously sent to
all systems
- Keyboard Macros - record a key sequence which can be played back to any
system or bound to a specific system
- Ability to skip slaves (great for dual-boot systems)
- Visual indicator to help find the cursor on transitions between systems
- Numerous bug fixes
- Improved usability
4th May 2007
Input Director v1.0.6 BETA is released.