Four Ways to Make Multiple Monitor Setup on Your Mac Easier
Multiple monitors are great, but you can’t just plug them in—you have to set them up. This applies to all computers, including Macs.
For example: There’s nothing more confusing than moving your mouse pointer off the right edge of your screen and then seeing it on the monitor on the left. This is because your computer doesn’t know where your monitors are physically located—you have to tell it.
The good news is that setting this up and changing other potentially annoying things about using multiple monitors on your Mac isn’t that hard. Here are some tips to get you started.
Organize your exhibits
Open the System Settings app and click the Displays button on the left sidebar. Here you can adjust settings such as the resolution of each display.
If both displays are showing the same image, first make sure they are set to Extended mode rather than Mirroring . You can do this using the Use as drop-down menu at the top of the screen. You can then use the Arrange button. All currently connected displays will appear as boxes that you can move around.
Arrange the margins so that they are in the same relative position as your displays. For example, I usually keep my laptop on my desk directly below my monitor, so I drag the display underneath the larger display as shown above. The trick is to make moving the mouse pointer between the screens feel natural – try a few times until you get it right. Note that by default, the menu bar only appears on the primary display. You can drag the menu bar from one display to another to make it your primary display if that’s important to you.
I’ve noticed that the difference in resolution can create a disjointed feeling. If one monitor has a high pixel density and the other doesn’t, a window dragged from one monitor to the other may be a completely different size. Adjust the settings until everything looks natural.
Your Mac saves different configurations depending on whether you have an external display connected. This means that adjusting the resolution of your laptop’s built-in display when connected to a monitor doesn’t affect how it works when not connected. This is convenient for me because I like to have a lot of workspace when working with my laptop away from my desk, so I tend to use a higher resolution. However, at my desk, I sit a little further from the display, so I prefer everything to be a little bigger. The settings make it all happen seamlessly and unnoticeably.
Smash Mission Control
If you’re a big user of Mission Control, the Mac feature that lets you create multiple virtual desktops with separate windows, you might find the way it works with multiple monitors a bit annoying. Changing desktops on one monitor also changes desktops on the other. There are pros and cons to this, of course, but I prefer the idea that turning on one monitor leaves the other static. I also really dislike how running an app full-screen on one monitor causes the other screen to go black unless I run a full-screen app on it.
Luckily, there is a way to fix this, and I think you should try it if you’re frustrated. In System Settings, click Desktop & Dock in the sidebar and scroll down to Mission Control . Check the toggle for Displays have separate spaces .
You’ll need to sign in and out of your account or restart your Mac for the changes to take effect. Once you do, you’ll find that each display has its own space.
It’s worth noting that this also makes the menu bar appear on all displays, which I personally think is an improvement (though it’s a little annoying that you can’t set the menu bar to appear on both displays without changing how Mission Control works).
Use your iPad as another screen
My colleague Khamosh wrote about using an iPad as another Mac display , and it’s a really neat way to add screen real estate. All you have to do is sign in to the same iCloud account on your iPad. Do that and place the iPad next to your laptop, and it should show up as a potential “Display” option in Display settings. This can be handy on the go — the iPad turns into a portable monitor.
Take control of your dock location
The position of the dock is not fixed when using multiple monitors. If one display is designated as the primary display, the dock will be positioned on that display unless there is another display next to it.
This is a little confusing, but don’t worry about it. For example, if the dock is set to appear on the left, but there is another display to the left of the main display, the dock will move all the way to the left. This is to prevent the dock from appearing between the displays.
If you prefer to directly control how your dock behaves when using multiple monitors, try HiDock . This app, which is worth installing when using multiple monitors , lets you customize the dock’s layout based on whether you have multiple monitors connected to it. It’s a nice bonus for flexibility, so give it a try if you’re constantly annoyed by how your dock behaves once you connect a monitor.