One mouse. Every computer.
Push your cursor off the edge of one computer's screen and keep going, onto the one beside it.
Your keyboard, clipboard and sound come too.
Website · Download · How it works
- Push off the edge. Arrange your computers like the Displays settings on your Mac; the cursor crosses wherever the screens meet, even across a gap if they don't line up exactly.
- Never gets stuck. Your Mac is always in charge. A lock screen, a frozen computer or a Wi-Fi drop-out can't trap the cursor: it comes straight home. Ctrl + Option + Esc always brings it back too.
- Clipboard follows you. Copy on one computer, paste on the other.
- Sound follows you. The computer you're sitting at plays the others' sound, through whatever it's using, AirPods included: push the cursor from your Mac onto Linux and Linux's sound comes to the Mac; push from Linux onto the Mac and the Mac's sound goes to Linux. Pressing your AirPods or the play/pause and skip keys controls whatever is playing.
- Shortcuts feel right. From a Mac to Linux, ⌘Tab, ⌘Space, ⌘Return, ⌘arrows and ⌘numbers go to the desktop as Super, ⌘C/⌘V/⌘X use Omarchy's universal copy and paste where it has it, and everything else (⌘T, ⌘F, ⌘W…) becomes Ctrl. From Linux to a Mac, Super is ⌘ and Alt is Option, where those keys sit.
- Wakes things up. Moving onto a blanked or locked screen turns it on; pushing towards a sleeping computer sends it a Wake-on-LAN packet.
- Nothing to configure. Computers find each other on your network, pair once with a four-digit code and pick the fastest connection (wired beats Wi-Fi).
Any computer can be the one you're sitting at: Mac → Linux, Linux → Mac, Mac → Mac and Linux → Linux, and each can be both at different times.
| Main computer (yours moves over) | Controlled (you move onto it) | |
|---|---|---|
| macOS 14.2+ | Yes | Yes |
| Linux: Hyprland (incl. Omarchy) | Yes | Yes |
| Linux: Sway, river, niri and other wlroots desktops | Yes, untested | Yes, untested |
| Linux: KDE Plasma | Yes, untested | Yes, after enable-input.sh, untested |
| Linux: GNOME | Not yet | Yes, after enable-input.sh, untested |
| Windows | Planned | Planned |
Clipboard works everywhere except GNOME (which doesn't let background apps use the clipboard yet). Sound goes either way between Macs and Linux (PipeWire); sending a Mac's sound needs the System Audio Recording permission.
Mac (macOS 14.2 or later, Apple Silicon or Intel)
- Download MouseTail-macos.dmg and drag MouseTail into Applications.
- Open it. This build isn't notarised yet, so the first time macOS will refuse: open System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway.
- Allow Local Network, Accessibility and Input Monitoring when asked. MouseTail starts working as soon as they're on.
Linux (Wayland), no sudo needed:
curl -fsSL https://mousetail.galen.green/install.sh | shThis installs ~/.local/bin/mousetail, runs it as a systemd user service that starts with your
desktop and, on Omarchy, adds an icon to the bar. On GNOME or KDE the installer will ask you
to run ~/.local/share/mousetail/enable-input.sh once (it needs your password) so other
computers can control this one. ~/.local/share/mousetail/uninstall.sh removes everything. To
let your Mac wake this computer from sleep, run ~/.local/share/mousetail/enable-wake.sh
(asks for your password once).
Pair: on a Mac, click the mouse in the menu bar, then Pair… next to the other computer;
on Linux, run mousetail pair. Type the code the other computer shows. Then put it where it sits on
your desk: Arrange Displays… on a Mac or in the Omarchy bar, or mousetail place <computer> left on Linux. Both
computers share one arrangement, so you only do this once.
Updates install themselves. MouseTail checks for a new release every few hours (and
straight away if another computer already has it, so the two stay compatible), and installs
it once you're not using another computer through it. Turn it off with Update
automatically in the Mac menu, or mousetail set updates off on Linux; mousetail update
installs the latest now.
- MouseTail only talks to computers on your local network, directly. There's no account, server or cloud.
- Every connection is encrypted (QUIC with TLS 1.3). Each computer has its own key; pairing pins the other computer's key, and unpaired computers can do nothing but ask to pair.
- Pairing uses SPAKE2 with the four-digit code, so the code never crosses the network. Each code allows one attempt and repeated wrong codes lock pairing for a while.
- Keystrokes are only sent while the cursor is on the other computer. macOS blocks this entirely while a password field has Secure Input on; MouseTail tells you when that happens.
- Updates come from this repository's GitHub releases and are signed with MouseTail's release key; anything without a valid signature is refused. The only other thing MouseTail fetches is that update check.
Found a security problem? Please open a private security advisory rather than an issue.
Both platforms have the same mousetail command (on the Mac it's inside the app:
/Applications/MouseTail.app/Contents/MacOS/mousetaild).
mousetail status what's connected, and where the cursor is
mousetail pair [computer] pair (the other computer shows a code to type here)
mousetail unpair <computer> forget a computer
mousetail pause <computer> stop sharing with it for now (it stays paired)
mousetail resume <computer> start sharing with it again
mousetail place <computer> <side> [n] put it left/right/above/below display n
mousetail set <clipboard|audio|updates|ripple> <on|off>
mousetail update install the latest release now (Linux)
mousetail release bring the cursor home
mousetail watch status as JSON lines, for status bars
You'll need Rust (stable), and on Linux the PipeWire and Opus development packages
(libpipewire-0.3-dev libopus-dev clang on Debian/Ubuntu; pipewire opus clang on Arch).
scripts/install-linux.sh # Linux: build and install for your user
scripts/build-mac-app.sh # Mac: build dist/MouseTail.app
scripts/package-mac.sh # Mac: universal DMG
scripts/package-linux.sh # Linux: release tarball
cargo test -p mousetail-core # the core's testsReleases are built by GitHub Actions when a v* tag is pushed.
| Path | What's there |
|---|---|
crates/core |
Platform-independent core: layout and cursor controller, keys, protocol, pairing, QUIC transport, discovery, audio (with tests) |
crates/mousetail |
The daemon and CLI, with macOS and Linux backends |
apps/macos |
SwiftUI menu bar app |
integrations/omarchy |
Omarchy bar plugin |
website |
mousetail.galen.green |
docs/DESIGN.md |
Architecture and the reasoning behind it |
research |
The feasibility experiments done before building, and their results |
dev |
Scripts for developing against a real Mac + Linux pair |
Issues and pull requests are welcome. For anything big (a new platform, say), open an issue
first so we can talk it through. Please run cargo fmt, cargo clippy and
cargo test -p mousetail-core before sending changes.
MIT © Galen Green. Made in Aotearoa New Zealand.