Mouse Without Borders KeysNotMatched Error

[littletuna4]

Microsoft PowerToys version

0.72.0.0

Installation method

PowerToys auto-update

Running as admin

No

Area(s) with issue?

Mouse Without Borders

Steps to reproduce

I have two machines that were connected. They have stopped working. Upon investigation I have found that they have spontaneously started failing to match the keys. Naturally, I have tried resetting everything and the error has persisted.
Win 11 pro on one machine.
Win 10 Home on the other. Again this hasn't been an issue in the past.

✔️ Expected Behavior

No response

❌ Actual Behavior

No response

Other Software

No response

[littletuna4]

Perhaps, the ui could display the received key to aid with debugging?

[cgravill]

I've experienced the same issue, working setup, update and it broke. Various attempts in the user interface but only some of the computers would connect, and others failed. I found a workaround, when I manually changed encryption key to the same value on each computer in the settings file in:

%localappdata%/Microsoft/PowerToys/MouseWithoutBorders/

it all worked again. That suggests it's something in the user interface or one of the checks that's at fault.

[MatheusPese]

I've experienced the same issue, working setup, update and it broke. Various attempts in the user interface but only some of the computers would connect, and others failed. I found a workaround, when I manually changed encryption key to the same value on each computer in the settings file in:

%localappdata%/Microsoft/PowerToys/MouseWithoutBorders/

it all worked again. That suggests it's something in the user interface or one of the checks that's at fault.

I was having the same issue, but manually inputting the key did not fix the problem for me.
The only thing that solved my issue was to delete the entire %localappdata%/Microsoft/PowerToys/MouseWithoutBorders/ folder in both computers.

Systems:
Windows10 Pro 22h2 (22621.2134)
Windows11 Home 22h2 (19045.3570)

[06b]

Ran into this issue recently, I couldn't figure out why Mouse Without Borders wouldn't work for me anymore as the ui would only flash the border color.

I was on PowerToys 0.77.0, tried uninstalling, reinstalling, both from the Windows executable from github and from the Microsoft Store, upgraded to PowerToys 0.78.0, no luck.

It wasn't until yesterday when I switched to using the original Mouse Without Borders UI that I was able to get the feedback about the Keys Not Matching, which thankfully allowed me to find this issue, after deleting the folder in localappdata I was able to get Mouse Without Borders to work again.

Systems:
Windows 11 Pro 21h2 (22000.2538)
Windows 11 Pro 23h2 (22631.3085)

[deanis74]

I noticed that the value for properties > SecurityKey > value in settings.json on one machine wasn't being properly updated. It still had an old key saved, not the latest one I had typed into the Connect fields. I had tried entering the security key using the old UI but it hadn't persisted to settings.json, either.

I managed to manually replace this in the file, Refresh Connections, and now I finally have control of my second machine. That only took about 3 hours to fix, and only 20 minutes after I found this post!

There's definitely a bug here, both in the new and old UI. A new security key isn't being written to settings.json, regardless of which UI is being used.

[KindJon]

in version 0.80.1.0 editing the json file directly is what fixed it for me!

[deanis74]

Thank you for summarizing what I said. Manually replacing the security key in settings.json fixes the issue.

[random-name-123]

I had the same issue as well, it was connecting well before and one day it stopped connecting.
Tried changing to old UI and it shows key did not match. Then i tried the above methods and the following one works:
The only thing that solved my issue was to delete the entire %localappdata%/Microsoft/PowerToys/MouseWithoutBorders/ folder in both computers.

[isaiahfranco]

I was having the same issue. I had to manually edit the settings.json file and put the same key in there on my second machine. Once I did that it connected right away.

[juanmpd]

Same issue, This seems a bug that should be addressed properly... I tried deleting the %localappdata%/Microsoft/PowerToys/MouseWithoutBorders/ folders entirely, and then going through the MWB setup, but they still refused to connect, with KeysNotMatched Error.
Finally I solved it as you all have pointed, by manually editing settings.json.
I don't know if this may be a clue to what was behind the problem, but the key in my settings.json file had some UTF (u/xxxx) characters, which I found really strange to be there... But simply writing there the correct one solved the issue.
Thanks all for sharing

[FennexFox]

I've experienced the same issue, working setup, update and it broke. Various attempts in the user interface but only some of the computers would connect, and others failed. I found a workaround, when I manually changed encryption key to the same value on each computer in the settings file in:
%localappdata%/Microsoft/PowerToys/MouseWithoutBorders/
it all worked again. That suggests it's something in the user interface or one of the checks that's at fault.

I was having the same issue, but manually inputting the key did not fix the problem for me. The only thing that solved my issue was to delete the entire %localappdata%/Microsoft/PowerToys/MouseWithoutBorders/ folder in both computers.

Systems: Windows10 Pro 22h2 (22621.2134) Windows11 Home 22h2 (19045.3570)

This solved my issue too!