About Aether
One keyboard. One mouse. Every machine on your desk. Open-source, encrypted, and maintained by Rimora Studio.
What is Aether
One keyboard and mouse, seamless across every machine on your desk.
Aether lets one keyboard and mouse control multiple computers on the same local network. The cursor moves from one screen to the next as if the machines were a single desktop. Clipboard sharing and TLS encryption are built in, so your input data stays private on the wire.
Aether runs as a server on your primary machine and as a client on each secondary machine, communicating over your existing LAN. No special hardware, no cloud services, no accounts.
Why use Aether
Better than a hardware KVM, simpler than the alternatives.
Hardware KVM & other software
- Expensive hardware or cable switching
- Often lacks encryption
- Limited cross-platform support
- Inactive maintenance
Aether
- Free, no hardware required
- TLS encryption built in
- Windows, macOS, and Linux
- Actively maintained by Rimora Studio
Key features
Everything you need to share one input across multiple machines.
Seamless screen crossing
Move the cursor off one screen edge and onto the next without any hotkey or button press.
Clipboard sharing
Copy on one machine, paste on another. Text and images both work across all platforms.
TLS encryption
All client-server traffic is encrypted. Certificates are generated and managed automatically.
Cross-platform
Windows, macOS, and Linux. X11 and Wayland are both supported on Linux.
Protocol compatibility
Interoperates with Synergy and Barrier clients and servers out of the box.
Qt-based GUI
Visual screen arrangement, hotkey configuration, and system tray integration.
Built with
A modern, battle-tested technology stack.
C++20
Modern C++ standard
Qt 6.7+
Cross-platform GUI
OpenSSL 3.0+
TLS encryption
CMake 3.24+
Build system
License & community
Free software, open to everyone.
License
Aether is distributed under GPL-2.0-only with an OpenSSL exception, or as noted per file. See LICENSE and LICENSES/ in the repository for full details.
No telemetry, no accounts, no lock-in. The source is yours to read, modify, and redistribute under the license terms.
Source & community
The source code is available on GitHub at RimoraStudio/Aether.
Contributions, bug reports, and feature requests are welcome. See the docs page for guides, or open an issue to report a bug.
Rimora Studio
The team behind Aether.
Rimora Studio
Open-source software, maintained with care.
Rimora Studio is the maintainer of Aether. We took over the project to keep it actively developed, properly maintained, and freely available under its original open-source license.
Our focus is on stability, security, and cross-platform support. We ship regular updates, respond to issues, and work with the community to make Aether better for everyone. No paywalls, no feature gates, no telemetry.
Roadmap
What is being built next for Aether.
Virtual display driver integration
Detect and integrate the open source IddCx Virtual Display Driver. Create and destroy virtual monitors on demand. Implement DXGI Desktop Duplication screen capture. Proof of concept with raw frame transmission.
Video encoding and streaming
Encode captured frames with FFmpeg using H.264 or H.265 with hardware acceleration. Stream encoded frames over the network using the existing TLS socket and chunked transfer. Client-side decoding and fullscreen rendering.
Input forwarding from display client
Capture mouse and keyboard events on the display client. Forward them back to the server using new protocol messages. Server injects input into the virtual display coordinate space. Full interactive loop working end to end.
GUI integration and production release
Add display management UI to the Aether GUI. Bundle the VDD driver with the installer. Persist display configuration. Documentation and testing across Windows versions. Production ready release.
Read the full technical design in the virtual display plan.