Dear Apple, Why Does Universal Control Suck?

i love the idea of Universal Control, but it doesn’t work as well as it should.
Thoughts
Apple
Universal Control
Published

March 28, 2025

I have multiple Apple devices, but I want to use a single keyboard and mouse. Apple supposedly has a solution for this: Universal Control. Except… well, it is mostly unusable. The experience is frustrating, with so many disconnects that you mostly just spend your time trying to reconnect rather than being productive.

Here’s an alternative - just use Deskflow. It is a simple, open-source solution that works well, and is the basis for Synergy. It is not as seamless as Universal Control, but works reliably and does the job once you get it going. I have been using it for a while now, and have not had any issues so far, unlike Universal Control, which is a hair-pulling experience. Better still, you can install it with just homebrew:

brew tap deskflow/homebrew-tap
brew install deskflow

Then just run Deskflow.app and you are good to go.

Apple, get it together!

Reuse

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