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Do all international keyboards work with Synergy 1 and Synergy 3?

Updated

Written for Synergy 3 (v3.7.2) and Synergy 1 (v1.21.4), checked 3 October 2026.

Synergy 1 and Synergy 3 support most common keyboards, but there are some limitations depending on the language and character set.

Supported keyboards

  • US and UK keyboards are fully supported.
  • In most cases, Latin-based keyboards (e.g., French, Spanish, Italian) work as expected.

Limitations

  • Special characters (such as á é í ó ú or ä ë ï ö ü) may not always appear correctly on the client computer.
  • Non-Latin alphabets (e.g., Arabic, Cyrillic, Asian scripts) generally work, but have some limitations as some keys might not appear as expected on the client computer, especially with input method layouts.
  • Input mismatches may occur when switching between different keyboard layouts.

Workaround: Use the server's keyboard layout

If you experience issues with characters not displaying correctly, turn on the option to use the server's (primary computer's) keyboard layout on each client. This makes the client adopt the server's keyboard layout, which can resolve some inconsistencies.

Important: All computers must have the exact same keyboard languages installed

The selected language doesn't necessarily need to match, but for Synergy 1 or Synergy 3 to decode the characters, the same keyboard languages have to be installed on all computers. Synergy 1 shows a Missing Keyboard Layouts message listing any that are missing.

Synergy 1

This option is on by default in Synergy 1. To check it:

  1. Open Synergy 1 on the client computer
  2. Click Configure Client
  3. In Client Configuration, tick Use server's keyboard language on this computer
  4. Click Save
  5. Repeat for any other client computers.

On a Linux client using X11, Synergy 1 ignores this option.

Synergy 3

  1. Open Synergy 3
  2. Go to Manage computers
  3. Click the ⋯ menu next to a secondary computer
  4. Click Computer preferences
  5. Go to the Miscellaneous tab
  6. Switch on Use the primary computer's keyboard layout
  7. Click Save
  8. Repeat for any other secondary computers.

Future improvements

We are actively working on broader support for international keyboards, including full compatibility for major language layouts.

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