Only one of the monitors can be your main monitor, but it doesn't matter which: you choose by clicking on the screen in the diagram and then checking the box next to 'Make this my main screen'. Oct 20, 2014 - How to set up multiple monitors with your Mac. Connecting a second or third display to a Mac is something you can do. With the menu bar and dock being restricted to only appearing on one. Computers Operating Systems Software OS X 10.10 Yosemite OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion OS X 10.9 Mavericks.
Advertisement You’ve found the right and have a second monitor connected — now what? Here’s everything you need to know to set up and use multiple monitors with your Mac. Having more than one monitor is a multitasker’s dream, but it’s also been a historic weakness of Mac computers. It used to be that the menubar and dock would only show up on your primary monitor, and that full-screen apps on one monitor would leave any second monitor useless. Thankfully, Apple changed all of these things in the last few versions of OS X, making life much better for multiple monitor users.
If you’re still having problems, there are a few system settings and tools than can make the experience even better. Let’s start with the absolute basics, shall we? Arrange Your Monitors In The Settings When you first connect a second monitor to your Mac, there’s a chance both monitors will show the exact same thing – this is called mirroring. To change things, head to System Preferences, then Displays. If Mirror Displays is checked, uncheck it. Do that and both monitors should now be independent — you can move your mouse from one to the other.
This is all well and good, but it gets a bit more complicated for users of multiple monitors. For example: if you set up multiple monitors, then set an app to work in Full-Screen mode, you might notice one of your monitors going blank. If this happens to you, head to Mission Control in System Preferences and make sure Displays have separate spaces is checked. This will allow you to use a full-screen app on one monitor while another works as a regular desktop. It also lets you switch virtual desktops on one monitor without switching on the other.
This lets you get more out of your multiple monitor setup, so make sure it’s enabled. : Move Windows Between Monitors With Keyboard Shortcuts Mission control is great, but it doesn’t offer much in the way of keyboard shortcuts. Sure, you can enter mission control and switch desktops, but that’s it. If you want to move an application from one display to another, you need to use the mouse., a free tool originally designed to let you It's especially useful for Mac users who do lots of work in applications like iPhoto or Aperture, or who surf the web., today does so much more than that. With this app installed you can set up your own keyboard shortcuts for moving windows from one monitor to another: If you’re the kind of user who likes to avoid the mouse, this is a big deal, If you want more control over your Mac using your Magic Mouse or trackpad, BetterTouchTool puts hundreds of actions at your finger tips. You’ll find features that replicated the “Snap” function in Windows 7, so you can quickly make an app take up half or one-quarter of the screen – useful if you want to get even more out of your displays.
If you want a lot more control over you Mac, learn to use this app. Use Your iPad or iPhone As a Monitor Is two monitors already not enough for you? You can You can now use an iPad app to expand your collection of screens, turning your $500 tablet into a small, portable monitor.
It's called Duet. There are other tools for Productivity pros swear by multiple monitors, but we don't all have the luxury of carrying around huge screens and endless wallets. On the other hand, the iPad has become pretty ubiquitous, and it can really., but this seems to be the best reviewed one out there. Display a Wallpaper Across Several Monitors You can set a unique wallpaper for every one of your monitors, but if you’d rather have one image spread across all of them ($3) is worth looking into. This app lets you split any image into appropriately-sized chunks for your displays. You can accomplish the same effect without this app, of course, but unless your displays are both the same size it’s going to take some work.
Either way, the final result can look pretty cool, and it’s only $3. Apple's natural stranglehold on the Mac market means discounts on their hardware aren't frequent. That said, you can get a Mac for less — you just need to know where to look.: Control Another Computer Entirely This is arguably unrelated, but if you’ve got multiple computers on your desktop A KVM switch makes me think of those archaic hardware A-B switches that once were used to hook up a parallel printer to two computers. KVM is actually short for 'keyboard, video and mouse',. With Synergy installed on two different systems – regardless of operating system – you can move your mouse from one computer to the other just like you were using multiple monitors.
It’s great if you mostly love working on your Mac, but sometimes need to use an old Windows machine for some reason. Setting this up can be time-consuming, but it’s totally worth it. What Did We Miss?
We’ve already covered So you set your Mac up with a second monitor, which was really exciting – but now you've no idea what to do with all that space., but I want to know how you do it. What tools and tips do you use? Or, if you’re a Windows fanboy, inexplicably spend some of your time insulting my choice in overpriced computers ( Apple's natural stranglehold on the Mac market means discounts on their hardware aren't frequent. That said, you can get a Mac for less — you just need to know where to look.). Explore more about:,.
If you have a high resolution LCD or LED screen at home and you are not using any kind of screen splitting application, then you are wasting your screen real estate big time! The best thing about having a high resolution screen is that you can see multiple windows at the same time, instead of just one active program at a time. Of course, you can always switch between programs by using ALT + TAB or by simply clicking on the program in the taskbar, but there are many times when you need to be able to see multiple programs at the same time. The latest operating system from Microsoft, Windows 10, not only has built-in support for multiple desktops, but it also has added a couple of nice features to the Snap feature that was included starting in Windows 7. In this article, I’m going to write about the new features in Windows 10 and also about a couple of freeware programs that also let you split your screen in different ways. If you’re not already familiar, read my previous post on.
Windows 10 New Snap Features First, let’s talk about Windows 10 because it has some really nice new features for working with multiple windows on the same desktop. As you already know, you can simply drag a window to the far left or far right of the screen and Windows will automatically resize that window to fill half the screen. The same is true for Windows 10, but now there is a new Snap Assist feature that also shows you the extra windows on the opposite side as thumbnails and lets you click on them to fill the other side of the screen.
In Windows 7 & 8, you had to manually snap the second window into place too. As you can see above, once I dragged and dropped Excel on the right side of the screen, the other open windows were automatically shown on the left side. Clicking on any of the windows will expand it to fill the entire left portion of the screen. Another new option is the 2×2 grid.
If you take a window and drag it to any corner of the screen, the window will fill up that particular corner or 1/4 of the screen. You can fill each corner with a desktop app or universal Windows app. In Windows 10, all apps act like desktop apps, so they can be snapped anywhere too. As you can see above, I have two apps snapped on the right side and one app on the left side.
It’s worth noting that the preview build of Windows 10 also supported vertical snapping, meaning the app would end halfway down the screen and go across horizontally, but that seems to have been removed in the final build. With Windows 10’s new snap options and virtual desktop manager, most people won’t ever need to bother downloading a third-party app to manage their windows. Freeware Apps There are also two freeware apps you can use to divide or split your screen into multiple parts and therefore work more efficiently. Earlier I had written about a program called SplitView, which lets you, but it costs $39!
Why pay when you can get something better for free? Is a very small utility that helps to organize all your open windows by tilting, resizing and positioning them so that they efficiently use all the space on your desktop. Using WinSplit Revolution, you can quickly split your screen into two halves, thirds, fourths, etc. You can resize any window and move it to the left half of the screen, the top, the bottom, a corner, etc. Then using either a virtual number pad or predefined hotkeys, you can quickly bring up a window to fullscreen or switch to another window. The program is nicely implemented and has a good number of useful features:. Automatically handles window resizing, moving, closing, etc.
Quick access via global hotkeys and virtual numpad. Automatic startup and update. Drag and drop windows into different sections. Fusion between two windows (splits two program vertically and allows you to use a middle bar to adjust the size). Mosaic mode – Splits the screen into nine equal parts and will place one window into each section. If you have less than nine windows open, it will adjust the size of the mosaic to make the windows larger.
Is the second program that allows you to divide or split your Windows desktop screen into multiple parts. I mentioned WinSplit first because it seems to have more features than GridVista.
You can again use it to split your screen into halves, thirds, etc. Just like WinSplit, but it does not have a virtual keypad. Simply drag a window into any of the sections and it will maximize to the full size of that section. You can then maximize any of the sections to full screen either via clicking with the mouse or via hotkey. So if you have a large monitor over 20”, then you should definitely check out either of these programs.
Overall, both programs work well in Windows XP, Vista, and 7, so you can play around with both and see which one works out better for you. The only downside to these freeware apps is that they are old and not developed anymore.
For example, MaxTo has actually replaced WinSplit, but I don’t think it’s worth the money. The freeware apps work, but not as useful on new operating systems like Windows 8 and 10.