Product: Synergy (all versions)
Operating system: macOS
When updating Synergy in macOS, you may get an error message saying you can't continue because the Synergy.app is in use, even though the application has been closed.
App in use message in macOS
How to fix it
In order to update Synergy you would need to close/stop Synergy, first step is to use the user interface available to shut down the Synergy service before installing.
You may need to locate the black and white Synergy icon in the menu bar in the top right of your screen.
Click the Synergy menu bar icon and click Stop, and then close/quit.
If closing Synergy does not help, first restart the Mac to see if the error message clears. Again, if this does not help try forcing the application processes to close, or remove the application in another way.
Closing processes
Go to the Activity Monitor in macOS and kill all of the Synergy processes. If that doesn't work I would run the following commands in the Terminal:
-
killall synergy
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killall synergy-server
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killall synergy-client
The solution is to either to force the application processes to close, or remove the application in another way.
If that doesn't help, uninstall the Synergy application in the terminal.
Removing the .app
Go to the Launchpad and search for "Terminal", then open the Terminal application and run the command:
sudo rm -rf /Applications/Synergy.app/
This should hopefully remove the .app file (which is the application you see in the Applications folder).
Once the Synergy processes have been stopped or the .app has been removed continue with the Synergy update.