Logitech hardware

I love my Logitech products. I have a wide variety of keyboards and mice that all use the Logitech unifying receiver. All I have to do is plug the unifying receiver into a USB port and the device just works. Originally I used a unifying receiver for each of the devices that I used with my laptop. I had one for the keyboard that I used at the house, one for the keyboard that I used at work, and one for the mouse that I carried back and forth with the laptop. It wasn’t a problem since I had three open USB ports. That is until I found a better way.

Logitech software (Windows/Mac)

Windows and Mac users can download a program from Logitech that is able to pair up to six devices to a single unifying receiver. While I had updated the firmware of the Logitech unifying receivers on Windows, I never knew that you could interchange devices that used unifying receivers with any unifying receiver that you wanted. And with each unifying receiver able to handle up to six devices, there wasn’t any need for me to use any more than one receiver.

Logitech software (Linux)

Logitech doesn’t provide their software for Linux, but the Linux community has created software that does the same job.

Logitech Unifying for Linux: Reverse Engineering and unpairing tool (author’s instruction page) is what I prefer. It is a simple command line tool that easily pairs and unpairs various Logitech unifying receivers with different devices that use them. If you are using one of the distributions of Linux that has access to the Arch User Repository (AUR) then you the installation is trivial. Even if you aren’t using the AUR, it is very easy to download, compile, and use.

There are other pieces of software out there that can accomplish the same thing without having to compile them. Solaar is another option that looks really interesting, but I haven’t actually tried it.