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Comment by cbm-vic-20 | Hacker News Reader

The author includes a diagram that shows his PC and his laptop plugged in via Thunderbolt 3 to the CalDigit TS3+ dock, and no direct connection to the monitor. Looking at the dock's product page[1], I don't see how this can have two hosts connected; did I miss something in this article?

[1] https://www.caldigit.com/ts3-plus/

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No, you didn't miss anything. I'm assuming that he just unplugs the cable from one when he wants to use the other. As far as I know there aren't any sort of KVM thunderbolt 3 hubs in existence.

Doesn’t that leave his MacBook without power and thus it would lose its charge?

It would lose its charge over time, yes. Just like any other laptop that's left unplugged.

If he's taking the laptop with him then that's not really an issue and if he wants to use it docked he'd just plug it back into the dock, though.

I routinely lose my 2017 Macbook Air around the house (I only use it occasionally) and every time I open the lid I am pleased to see the battery still topped off, even after days away from the charger.

Probably configured to sleep on unplugging. The charge will last a few weeks, anyway, under those conditions.

I use that CalDigit dock with my work laptop and personal laptop, and I just swap the cable. Adding a KVM switch just for that use case wouldn't make sense in my opinion.

I don't mind swapping the cable. What bothers me (a bit) is that the ports where I have to unplug and plug the cables are in the back of devices that have many other cables plugged in so I don't want to turn them to face the tb3 port towards my hand or else all the other cables will clutter my desk.

1. a dock that puts the tb3 input on the front would work for me

2. a mechanical female plug / extension cord would work for me (but likely not possible due to noise?)

Good idea actually, I’m using 2 PCs with one monitor over USB-c. The monitor takes more than 10 key presses through a horrific on screen menu to change input sources. I didn’t even think of swapping the cable!

> The monitor takes more than 10 key presses through a horrific on screen menu to change input sources

This sounds like a job for Autohotkey or a similar automation tool. It's worth learning something like this on your platform.

I can’t change the input from a pc, only using buttons on the monitor itself. Using i2c over display port is possible to change input source but I don’t really have the will to spend time on trying it.

Incidentally, I was asked to uninstall autohotkey from my work PC because some corporate spyware detected it as a threat.

I can confirm that either of the thunderbolt ports on the back of that dock can connect to a host machine. With mine, I connect a modern thunderbolt-3 mac and and older mac one with thunderbolt 2. I can leave both cords plugged into the dock all the time and just use the proper cable for the computer I'm using and it just works.

Really? For me only 1 of them connects to the Mac, the other one doesn’t recognize the Mac.

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