Unlike automation, cloning keypresses or clicks allows manually performing repetitive actions across multiple programs, accounts and machines. This is commonly done in the gaming world for FF14 or WoW multiboxing, but We argue that this software can unlock potential for startups as productivity tools.
These are the most up-to date tools available that work on modern operating systems:
Isboxer by LavishSoft:
- Premium MMORPG multi-boxing software to optimize the experience
- Helps configure sofware, hardware, input devices, graphics settings per window
- Organize game windows, switch layouts, use widgets to show views from other windows
- Clone mouse and keyboard inputs across windows
- Build custom multi-boxing interfaces with interactive views, buttons, click pass-through regions
- Highly configurable key mappings for broadcasting and interface adjustments
Lavish Software is an independent software development company founded in 2004. It specializes in high quality game enhancement software for “multiboxing” - playing multiple characters together in Massively-Multiplayer Online (MMO) games. Its first products were EQPlayNice and WinEQ for EverQuest. It later released WinEQ 2 with support for more games, and then Inner Space as a more versatile multiboxing platform. Lavish Software’s ISBoxer software builds on Inner Space and continues to push innovations in multiboxing.
Lavish Software aims to provide quality, safe products that have good relationships with major MMO publishers. The owner and founder, Joe Thaler (known as Lax), believes in earning business through quality software, strong support, and no advertising or bloatware. Lavish sells subscription-based products since games require constant updates and specialized multiboxing software needs continuous maintenance and expansion. Subscriptions auto-renew but are not automatically charged, allowing customers flexibility.
OpenMultiBoxing (Open Source):
- Open source multi-boxing software for games and apps
- Setup window layouts and fast keyboard switching between windows
- Mouse click broadcasting with exclusions possible
- Key press broadcasting to choose which keys are sent to which windows
- Multi-PC broadcasting by connecting multiple machines
- Round Robin window organization & rotation.
HotKeyNet:
- Free software to pass hotkeys and key presses to multiple game instances
- Works on one or more Windows machines
- Fully configurable via text scripting language
- No GUI, so needs scripting knowledge to customize
- Handles sending keys only, so macros still required to coordinate
The download, sample scripts and command reference, you will need to check out their archived website.
KeyClone:
- Premium cloned input software with intuitive setup wizard
- Wizard handles game launch and account setup across windows
- Adjust multi-monitor display configurations
- Fine-tune which keys are broadcasted or not
- Use with macros and addons to fully control in-game characters
- There are various productivity use cases possible by coordinating inputs across accounts, programs, and machines. But ethics depend on how this capability is specifically applied.
Download Keyclone direct from the Solid ICE website after purchasing a license.
Here are some examples for each of the business productivity use cases:
Social Media Management
A social media manager could use a multi-boxing tool like KeyClone to post content across 10 different brand Facebook pages at once. For example, they prepare a new post for a holiday sale promotion, then distribute that same post simultaneously through all brand profiles managed for clients by cloning keyboard shortcuts to upload images/text across each tab. This allows scaling posting reach dramatically. Comments and messages could also be managed across more profiles faster.
Software Testing
A QA engineer testing a website can clone clicks and inputs across different Windows 10, Windows 11, iOS, Android and legacy Windows browsers like IE8 running in various virtual machines (VMs) simultaneously. Any bugs or issues that surface from interacting with the site can then be quickly validated across environments in a fraction of the time, without constantly switching machines or emulators manually.
Data Entry
An e-commerce seller processing hundreds of paper order forms could use a multi-boxing tool to rapidly digitize that data across multiple data entry windows at once. For example, they configure various order entry templates on a multi-monitor workstation. By cloning typing and clicking across this customized dashboard, a single user can scale how quickly information is captured, without errors commonly arising from context switching.
Customer Service
A freelance virtual assistant managing multiple live chat customer support sessions can answer more concurrent inquiries by cloning common troubleshooting steps, resource links, and routing responses across all active dialogs visible at once. Multi-boxing tools enable scaling personalized assistance by distributing repetitive inputs faster. Response times improve dramatically.
Administration
An IT admin needing to quickly patch and update dozens of customer-facing application servers can orchestrate that work across all machines from a single console using multi-boxing software. Rather than manually logging into each server to download, install, restart and validate updates, they clone that routine across panels through efficient key mappings and macros. Servers stay synchronized and uptime improves.
Web Research/Scraping
A data analyst needs to gather nightly inventory reports from multiple ecommerce sites to prepare market summaries for clients by morning. Multi-boxing tools help them quickly dispatch bots/scrapers to fetch PDF reports, scrape updated product listings, ingest latest pricing feed datapoints across a multitude of browser windows simultaneously. Automated alerts help identify any issues. The required numbers are aggregated faster.
While typically associated with gaming, multi-boxing tools like Isboxer, OpenMultiBoxing, HotKeyNet and KeyClone have capabilities that lend themselves to a variety of business use cases. By coordinating inputs across multiple accounts, programs and machines simultaneously, the efficiency of single users can be dramatically improved.
Potential applications range from social media managers scaling posting/interactions across brand profiles, QA engineers validating websites across diverse device environments faster, virtual assistants parallelizing customer support sessions, ecommerce owners speeding up order data entry, IT admins synchronizing infrastructure changes across servers in fewer steps, and data analysts scraping/ingesting market research feeds more efficiently.
The common theme across these examples is leveraging multi-boxing software to distribute repetitive interactions of a single user across a multitude of endpoints. This avoids inefficient context switching while multiplying productivity. For resource-constrained teams and early stage businesses, rethinking such tools outside gaming scenarios unlocks worthwhile productivity gains.
With careful implementation, use cases abound for responsibly streamlining business administration, market research/testing, customer support and data processing - especially for startups aiming to punch above their weight.