Share one keyboard and mouse between Hyprland machines on your local network. Push the pointer off the edge of one screen and it continues on the next machine; the keyboard follows the pointer.
Ferry is built only for Hyprland on Omarchy. It has a Rust daemon
(ferryd), a ferry command-line tool, and an Omarchy shell plugin for the bar.
Status: 0.1.0, an early preview. It is used daily between two machines. Expect rough edges, and run the same Ferry version on every machine.
You need two or more Omarchy machines on the same network. Do steps 1 and 2 on every machine.
1. Build and install the package.
git clone https://github.com/mmonari/ferry
cd ferry
bin/install # builds the Arch package and installs it; pacman asks for sudo
On a slow machine, build once on a fast one and copy the package over. The build targets the plain baseline of its arch (x86-64 or aarch64), so the package runs on every machine of that arch:
scp pkgbuild/ferry-*.pkg.tar.* other-machine: # on the fast machine
sudo pacman -U ferry-*.pkg.tar.* # on the other machine
2. Set up the machine, as your own user (not root):
ferry setup # shows each change and asks once
ferry doctor # every row should read PASS; each WARN or FAIL comes with its fix
ferry setup puts the Ferry widget on the bar, starts ferryd, adds the key bindings and offers
to open UDP port 4243 in the firewall. Add --dry-run to see every change first.
3. Pair two machines. On the first machine:
ferry pair --accept
Then, within 120 seconds, on the second machine:
ferry pair <first-machine-host-or-ip>
Both screens show the same 6-digit code. Confirm on both. The Pair tab of the Ferry panel does the
same (ferry ui pair). With three or more machines, pair every two of them: three machines
take three pairings.
4. Arrange the screens like they stand on your desk. Click the Ferry icon on the bar (or run
ferry ui arrange), drag the monitors on the Screens tab so their edges touch, and apply.
From a terminal:
ferry layout show # machine names and their monitors
ferry layout place netbook --below desktop # also --above, --left-of, --right-of
The anchor can also be one monitor, such as desktop:HDMI-A-1. --align start|center|end picks
where along that edge the machine sits.
5. Try it. Push the pointer through an edge that touches the other machine, then type. To
come back, push the pointer back, or press Super+Ctrl+Escape: it always brings the keyboard
and mouse home.
- Edge crossings. Arrange the machines' monitors on one shared layout. A pointer that leaves through a linked edge enters the next machine at the matching point.
- Keybind crossings.
Super+Ctrl+Altplus an arrow key moves the keyboard and mouse to the machine on that side, or back home, without touching the pointer. - Shared clipboard. Copy text or an image on one machine, cross, and paste on the other. Only the list of types moves on a copy; the data moves when something pastes.
- Bar widget and panel. The icon shows where your keyboard and mouse are. Click it for one panel with three tabs: Screens (the layout and your machines), Pair and Settings.
- Encrypted, LAN only. Peers talk QUIC with mutual TLS 1.3. Each machine pins the other's key fingerprint when you pair them, and refuses everything else. There are no accounts and no cloud.
Click the Ferry icon on the bar. The panel opens in the middle of the screen and follows your Omarchy theme. Lock to this machine is in its header on every tab.
Screens is the shared layout. Drag a machine so its edges touch another one; the pointer crosses where they touch. Nothing is sent until you press Apply, which updates every machine.
Pair lists the machines nearby, or takes an address. A running pairing shows the code both machines must agree on.
| Pair a machine | Compare the code (light theme) |
|---|---|
 |
 |
Settings groups every option on the left. Most changes apply at once; a badge marks the few
that need a restart of ferryd or a new ferry setup.
- Omarchy 4.5 with Hyprland 0.56.2 (Lua config) and xdg-desktop-portal-hyprland 1.4.1, the versions Ferry is tested on.
- Machines that can reach each other on UDP port 4243.
- To build: Arch's
rustpackage (edition 2024).bin/installpulls it in if it is missing.
| How | What it does |
|---|---|
Super+Ctrl+Escape |
The escape chord. It always returns input to this machine, even if ferryd hangs. |
ferry release |
The same, from a terminal. |
ferry lock on |
No crossing starts from this machine until ferry lock off. |
Ferry also releases by itself:
- If a peer goes silent, held keys are released on the other machine within about 650 ms.
- Ferry never captures input while the screen is locked.
| Command | What it does |
|---|---|
ferry status |
This peer, each peer's link, and the current state |
ferry go left|right|up|down |
Move input to the machine on that side, or back home |
ferry doctor |
Check this machine; prints a fix for every problem it finds |
ferry ui arrange|pair|settings |
Open the Ferry panel on its Screens, Pair or Settings tab |
ferry peers, ferry unpair |
List the pinned peers, or remove one |
ferry id, ferry trust |
Pair by hand: print this machine's fingerprint, or pin another's |
ferry clipboard on|off|toggle |
Share the clipboard with the other machines, or stop |
ferry config |
Read and change config.toml through ferryd, which checks every value |
ferry events |
Stream ferryd's events as JSON lines, for frontend authors |
Every command takes --json. The socket API is documented in
docs/api/socket-api.md.
- Start with
ferry doctoron both machines. It checks the daemon, Hyprland, the portal, the key bindings, the firewall and each peer, and prints a fix for each problem. - The machines don't connect. Both must allow UDP port 4243. Omarchy's firewall blocks it until
ferry setupopens it (sudo ufw allow ferry). - The pointer stops at the edge. Only edges that touch in the layout are links. Check with
ferry layout show, or look at the Screens tab of the Ferry panel. - Logs:
journalctl --user -u ferryd -f.
To update, on every machine:
git pull
bin/install
systemctl --user restart ferryd # the running daemon is still the old version
To uninstall:
ferry setup --undo # add --purge to also delete keys, peers and settings
sudo pacman -R ferry
ferry setup --undo prints the Hyprland and firewall lines it added; remove those yourself.
docs/packaging.md has the details, and what the package installs.
- Hyprland on Omarchy only. Other compositors, macOS and Windows are out of scope.
- Same version on every machine. Mixed versions are not tested.
- Clipboard: text and images, no files. A copy goes to the machine the pointer last crossed
to or came from, and its data moves only when something pastes there (at most 32 MiB by
default).
ferry clipboard offstops sharing. The primary selection (middle-click) is not shared. - No network discovery yet. Its settings exist, but nothing reads them.
- With fcitx5: the first modifier pressed in a crossing that starts right after the machine was a target can end the crossing, and the key chord lands on the local machine.
MIT, see LICENSE. Ferry includes code from
gliff under the MIT License; see NOTICE.