The KVM switch was inside your monitors all along.
Every monitor built since the late 90s carries a command channel in its video cable — DDC/CI. Nothing on your desk speaks it. Deskwire does: one tap, and every screen turns to the PC you asked for. No box between your graphics card and your panels, no capture dongles, no drivers on the losing machine — it is never even told.
Start the 7-day trial See how it works
Windows, macOS and Linux agents. Android remote. Your keyboard-and-mouse switch keeps its job.
How it works
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Put a small agent on each PC
A single binary for Windows, macOS or Linux. It sits in the tray, holds your monitor map, and owns one verb: show me. No admin rights, no kernel driver, no service running as root — it never needs them, by design.
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Say which machine gets the desk
Tap it on your phone, click the tray, or press the button on the USB switch you already own — the agent notices your keyboard arriving and takes that as the request.
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The monitors obey
The winning agent writes one value — input source, register 0x60 — down each video cable. Your monitors switch inputs exactly as if you had pressed their buttons, at native resolution and zero added latency, because nothing sits in the video path. The losing PC is never told anything. That is the whole point.
Against the box you were about to buy
The classic answer to a two-PC desk is a metal box and a fistful of cables: two runs per monitor, a switch chip that tops out below your refresh rate, and an EDID emulator that may or may not convince your OS the monitors never left. Multi-monitor 4K models run into the hundreds of euros, ship from catalog brands with warranties measured in goodwill, and put firmware you will never see — and can never patch — between your GPU and your glass.
Deskwire is the answer from the other direction. Your monitors have known how to switch inputs since the 90s; nobody on the desk was asking them. We don't add hardware to your video path — we retire the need for it. No box. No second set of cables. No EDID roulette. Nothing to RMA.
The best KVM switch is the one your monitors were born with.
| Hardware KVM box | Deskwire | |
|---|---|---|
| Video path | Through the box — its switch chip, its max refresh, its firmware | Untouched. Cables run straight from each PC to the monitors |
| Display identity (EDID) | Emulated by the box — wake-up reshuffles and phantom monitors when it guesses wrong | Native. Each PC talks to the real monitor; nothing is impersonated |
| Three 4K monitors, 2+ PCs | Hundreds of euros, if the model exists at all | The ports your monitors already have |
| Switching | Physical button, all-or-nothing | Phone, tray, CLI, or the button on your existing USB switch |
| The losing PC | Sees its monitors vanish; windows reshuffle | Never notified — keeps rendering, layout intact |
| Keyboard & mouse | Bundled into the box | Your existing USB switch keeps that job; we follow its button |
| New cables | Two per monitor, plus the box's quirks | None |
| When it breaks | An RMA form and a desk out of action | It is software: an update, not a return label |
Compatibility
Monitors
Any monitor that implements DDC/CI — which is nearly every desktop monitor made since the mid-2000s — over HDMI, DisplayPort, or USB-C in DisplayPort mode. Laptop lids are wired differently and cannot be switched; external panels on a laptop work fine. The 7-day trial exists precisely so your own desk is the test bench: the app's dry-run mode shows exactly what it would switch before it ever touches a setting.
USB switches
Deskwire never talks to your USB switch — it doesn't need to. The agent watches for your keyboard and mouse arriving on a machine and treats that as the switch request. So any dumb USB sharing switch works by construction: press its button, peripherals jump, monitors follow within a couple of seconds.
| Device | Status | |
|---|---|---|
| UGREEN USB 3.0 Sharing Switch (30768) | verified tested end-to-end on the developer's own desk — button press to monitor switch | Buy on Amazon |
| Other USB sharing switches (Sabrent, ATEN, dock stations, plain replugging) | compatible by design the watcher reacts to USB arrival, not to the box | Report yours |
Verified means we ran the full loop on real hardware. Send us yours working and it joins the list with credit.
Platforms
Same rule as the devices above: we only stamp verified on what has run on real hardware, on a real desk. Everything ships from one codebase and passes the same test suite on every commit either way.
| Windows 10 / 11 | verified daily-driven on the developer's own desk — tray, USB-switch watcher, Bluetooth pairing for VPN-locked machines |
|---|---|
| Android | verified on real phones and tablets — discovers agents, pairs once with an 8-digit code, then one tap per PC. iPhone: not yet, honestly |
| Linux | built & gated tray or headless over ddcutil, no root required — compiles and passes the suite on every commit; desk verification pending |
| macOS (Apple Silicon) | built & gated menu bar; Intel Macs are not supported — desk verification pending |
Security, stated plainly
This product runs on your desk, next to your work. It is engineered so that trusting it costs as little as possible — and so the claims below are checkable, not vibes.
- No administrator rights, ever. Monitor control, the USB watcher, autostart and networking are all user-mode on every platform. A step that asked for admin would be a bug, not a requirement.
- Pairing is deliberate. A phone joins by typing an 8-digit code shown on the PC, valid for two minutes and five attempts. Wrong guesses are slowed, the fifth burns the code.
- Tokens, not accounts. The phone holds a 256-bit token; the agent stores only its hash. Revoke any device from the settings page at any time.
- Closed until opened. Agents listen on loopback only until you explicitly open pairing. The remote surface is an allowlist of four endpoints; everything else answers 404 before authentication is even attempted.
- No telemetry. No analytics, no crash uploaders, no accounts. At license activation the server sees your key and a salted device fingerprint — that is the complete list.
- This page practices what it preaches. It is static files: no JavaScript, no cookies, no third-party assets, no forms. Payment happens on the merchant's hosted checkout; card data never comes near us.
Found something anyway? Security reports go to [email protected] and are answered by the person who wrote the code.
Pricing
One license covers one desk: up to five PCs and as many phones as you own. Every plan has every feature — the only variable is how far ahead you pay. Cancel any time from the customer portal; your monitors are never held hostage: if a subscription lapses, switching keeps working for a 7-day grace period, and your settings, pairings and hardware buttons outlive it either way.
1 month
€4.90
€4.90 / month
3 months
€12.90
€4.30 / month
6 months
€22.90
€3.82 / month
12 months
€39.90
€3.33 / month
Launch pricing, may change. The trial is the full product for 7 days, no card. Checkout and downloads open with the 2.0 release — until then the button reaches a human.
Questions people actually ask
Will it work with my monitors?
If they are desktop monitors with HDMI, DisplayPort or USB-C inputs, almost certainly — DDC/CI has shipped in effectively everything since the mid-2000s. The honest caveats: a few monitors ship with DDC/CI off in their menu (turn it on), some TVs ignore it, and a laptop's built-in panel has no input to switch. The trial plus dry-run mode proves your exact desk before you pay anything.
I already own a USB switch. Do I replace it?
No — keep it, it just got better. Your box keeps switching the keyboard and mouse electrically, exactly as today. The agent notices your peripherals arriving and brings the monitors along. The UGREEN 30768 is verified end-to-end; anything that moves USB devices between machines behaves identically from the agent's point of view.
My work laptop is on a corporate VPN that kills the local network.
That desk is where this product was born. When a full-tunnel VPN or host firewall makes LAN pairing impossible, the phone pairs over Bluetooth instead — or over the USB cable. No IT ticket, no admin rights, no firewall exception.
What exactly happens if I stop paying?
For 7 days, nothing — that is the offline grace window, and it also covers holidays without internet. After it, the agents pause switching and say so clearly; they do not uninstall, do not nag hourly, and do not touch your monitor settings. Your pairings, monitor maps and your USB switch's physical button all keep working. Re-subscribe and everything resumes where it was.
What do you collect about me?
The app: no account, no analytics, no telemetry. License activation sends your key and a salted device fingerprint to the license server, which answers with a signed lease — that is the entire conversation. This website sets no cookies and runs no JavaScript, so there is nothing here to consent to.
Why should I trust a KVM I can't hold?
Because you can watch it think. Dry-run mode logs every switch it would make before you let it make one; the settings page shows every paired device and its last use; and the agent's remote surface is small enough to audit with curl. The parts that could hurt you are the parts we made inspectable.