Some designers (especially web developers) have more than one computer on their desk. Often they’ll use their powerful desktop workstation for the big projects, while they use their laptop to test web pages, check email, or change their iTunes playback.

Julien Robert’s free Teleport utility lets you work on multiple Macs using a single shared keyboard and mouse. One computer has the keyboard plugged directly into it, while Teleport allows you to control the other Mac over a network connection.

Once installed on both computer, you almost forget it is there. Just drag your mouse to the edge of one display and suddenly you are controlling the other Mac. You can even drag and drop files between them.

Teleport allows easy sharing of a single keyboard and mouse.

Once you have Teleport installed on both Macs, you can adjust the positioning of your two Macs screens very much as you would control screens attached to same computer. This example shows how I’ve set up my laptop with sits to the right of my main workstation.

What about mixing Macs and PCs?

Teleport is a Mac-only utility. But what if you have a Mac and a PC side-by-side that you’d like to control with a single mouse and keyboard? Another free utility called Synergy provides this same functionality between Macs and PCS.

Note: We have not yet tested Synergy ourselves, however there is a good write-up of this utility on the excellent LifeHacker blog.

Source: This tip inspired by our own juggling of multiple development and test workstations. Teleport is featured in the August issue of Design Tools Monthly, and on the always excellent LifeHacker blog.