Manual: Use Synergy/Deskflow on Omarchy (Hyprland) — mouse, keyboard, accents & shortcuts

[eleucarlos]

Manual: Use Synergy/Deskflow on Omarchy (Hyprland) — mouse, keyboard, accents & shortcuts

Full guide for sharing your Windows keyboard/mouse with an Omarchy (Hyprland) laptop.

The problem

Synergy 3 (and Deskflow) do not work out of the box on Hyprland/Wayland:

1. Mouse doesn't move — the client connects, clicks arrive, but POINTER_MOTION never reaches the compositor.
2. Keyboard accents break — á é í ó ú, ç come out as plain a e i o u.
3. Shortcuts don't fire — SUPER+W, SUPER+Enter, etc. do nothing when pressed on the remote keyboard.

Why? Hyprland has no native org.freedesktop.portal.RemoteDesktop backend (see hyprwm/xdg-desktop-portal-hyprland#252). We fix it with a small user-level portal bridge plus a Hyprland keybinding trick.

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The solution overview

Problem	Fix
No RemoteDesktop portal	Install a bridge portal (hypr-kdeconnect-portal) that implements RemoteDesktop via libeis → zwlr_virtual_pointer_v1 + zwp_virtual_keyboard_v1
Mouse frozen	Fix the EIS device creation to match KWin (don't ack START_EMULATING, add SCROLL+BUTTON, set physical_scale)
No accents	Sync Mod5 (keycode 84 = ISO_Level3_Shift) in modifiers + use US-Intl keymap + AltGr release-timing fix
No shortcuts	Hyprland ignores SUPER from virtual keyboards (#3125 / #8537) — so use ALT variants of the shortcuts

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Part 1 — Install the bridge portal

The bridge is a fork of gac3k/xdg-desktop-portal-hypr-remote with the KWin-compatible fixes.

Build

git clone https://github.com/iamnarayana/wayland-kdeconnect-fix ~/hypr-kdeconnect-bridge
cd ~/hypr-kdeconnect-bridge
cmake -S . -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX="$HOME/.local"
cmake --build build -j"$(nproc)"
cmake --install build

Configure the portal routing

~/.config/xdg-desktop-portal/portals.conf:

[preferred]
default=hyprland
org.freedesktop.impl.portal.ScreenCast=hyprland
org.freedesktop.impl.portal.Screenshot=hyprland
org.freedesktop.impl.portal.GlobalShortcuts=hyprland
org.freedesktop.impl.portal.RemoteDesktop=hypr-kdeconnect

Reload:

systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user restart xdg-desktop-portal
systemctl --user start hypr-kdeconnect-portal

Verify

ss -tn | grep 24800                      # Synergy client connected
hyprctl devices | rg 'virtual'           # virtual devices visible

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Part 2 — The critical bridge fixes

These are the fixes that make mouse + keyboard + accents actually work. All are in src/:

Mouse fix (KWin-style EIS devices) — src/eis_input_bridge.cpp

• Do NOT ack EIS_EVENT_DEVICE_START_EMULATING — just log it (KWin only sets an internal flag; acking here breaks motion).
• addPointer device: POINTER + BUTTON + SCROLL, no region.
• addAbsolutePointer device: POINTER_ABSOLUTE + SCROLL + BUTTON, with region and physical_scale:

  eis_region_set_physical_scale(region, 1.0);

Accent fix (Mod5) — src/wayland_input.cpp + .hpp

• Use US-Intl keymap (us + variant intl) in both createKeymapFd (EIS) and sendKeyboardKeymap (Hyprland).
• Include Mod5 in the modifier mask:

  if (isDown(84))            // ISO_Level3_Shift (AltGr from Windows)
      mask |= 1u << 7;       // Mod5

• Translate left Alt (56) and 84 → right Alt (100) so AltGr works.
• AltGr release timing: Windows sends AltGr up before the letter up (100D 24D 100U 24U), which makes the compositor swallow the accent. Hold the AltGr release until the letter is released.

Session acceptance — src/portal_backend.cpp

• Accept empty app-id from the trusted portal frontend caller.
• Add com.symless.synergy (Synergy Flatpak) to isAllowedAppId in src/security_policy.hpp.
• Return clipboard_enabled=true in Start.

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Part 3 — Shortcuts: use ALT instead of SUPER

The key discovery: Hyprland fires keybinds from virtual keyboards for ALT and CTRL, but NOT for SUPER/Meta (issue #3125: "All modifiers except the super key work" — confirmed by vaxerski). There is no fix; the workaround is to add ALT variants of the SUPER shortcuts.

Add to ~/.config/hypr/bindings.lua:

-- Remote keyboard ALT variants (mirror the SUPER shortcuts)
o.bind("ALT + RETURN", "Terminal (remote)", { omarchy = "terminal" })
o.bind("ALT + W", "Close window (remote)", hl.dsp.window.close())
o.bind("ALT + Q", "Close window (remote)", hl.dsp.window.close())
o.bind("ALT + F", "Full screen (remote)", hl.dsp.window.fullscreen({ mode = "fullscreen" }))
o.bind("ALT + T", "Toggle floating (remote)", hl.dsp.window.float({ action = "toggle" }))
o.bind("ALT + J", "Toggle split (remote)", hl.dsp.layout("togglesplit"))
o.bind("ALT + D", "Omarchy menu (remote)", "omarchy-menu toggle root")
o.bind("ALT + S", "Toggle scratchpad (remote)", hl.dsp.workspace.toggle_special("scratchpad"))
o.bind("ALT + 1", "Workspace 1 (remote)", hl.dsp.focus({ workspace = "1" }))
o.bind("ALT + LEFT", "Focus left (remote)", hl.dsp.focus({ direction = "l" }))
-- ... (41 total: workspaces 1-9, move window, focus directions, pseudo, pop-out, layout toggle)

IMPORTANT (Hyprland 0.56 Lua parser): binds must use the hl.dsp.* dispatchers (e.g. hl.dsp.window.close()), NOT plain strings like "killactive" or "togglefloating" — strings only work for executable commands (omarchy-menu toggle root) or { omarchy = "..." } app launchers.

Reload and verify:

hyprctl reload
hyprctl configerrors   # should be empty
omarchy menu keybindings --print | grep remote

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Result

Feature	Status
Mouse (motion / click / scroll)	✅
Keyboard (letters & numbers)	✅
Accents (á é í ó ú ç)	✅
Shortcuts (ALT variants, 41 total)	✅
Original SUPER shortcuts (local keyboard)	✅

Works with Synergy 3.6.3 (client Flatpak) and should work with Deskflow and any libei/RemoteDesktop client. Server side can be Windows, macOS or Linux.

Files

• Bridge source: ~/hypr-kdeconnect-bridge/ (stable binary: ~/hypr-kdeconnect-bridge/backup-working)
• Portal config: ~/.config/xdg-desktop-portal/portals.conf
• ALT binds: ~/.config/hypr/bindings.lua
• Keyboard layout: ~/.config/hypr/input.lua

Related upstream issues

• hyprwm/xdg-desktop-portal-hyprland#252 — RemoteDesktop support
• Hyprland #3125 / #8537 — SUPER doesn't trigger keybinds from virtual keyboards
• deskflow#7499 — Wayland known bugs (incl. AltGr accent capitalization, fixed here)

Tested on Omarchy + Hyprland 0.56.2, Windows Synergy 3.6.3 server.