What’s the best desk setup for using multiple laptops?

The physical setup matters, but having a repeatable configuration process helps just as much. Keep a dotfiles or bootstrap setup that installs your tools and settings on a replacement laptop. That way, even if the desk arrangement changes, moving to another machine doesn’t become a full afternoon of manual setup.

I keep the laptops vertically arranged to save space, with the personal one closed on the desk and my main work laptop on a stand. All my peripherals plug into one USB hub, which is mounted under the desk and connected to a long USB extension. I move that single connection to whichever laptop I’m using. I also keep my configurations synchronized with Nix, Home Manager, and a few small scripts, so switching machines is fairly painless.

A USB-C dock is probably the cleanest option if the laptops support charging and video over USB-C. Connect the monitor, keyboard, mouse, and other peripherals to the dock, then switch the dock’s single cable between laptops. If you need both machines visible at once, an ultrawide monitor with picture-by-picture mode can display both systems side by side. Software such as Barrier or Synergy can also let one keyboard and mouse control both.

If you don’t need to use every laptop directly, remote access can make the desk much simpler. I usually connect to the other machines over SSH or RDP and keep only one laptop physically connected to the monitor and peripherals. It works especially well when the other systems are mainly needed for builds, testing, or long-running tasks.

A cross-platform keyboard-and-mouse sharing tool like Synergy is useful when the laptops need to remain active at the same time. It avoids buying a hardware KVM and lets you move the pointer between systems, though a proper dock or KVM is still better if you also need to switch displays and USB devices.