Using Multiple Displays With Your Mac

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how to use your Mac with multiple displays. 

So you can have multiple displays with your Mac. You've got a MacBook and you can use your MacBook screen as one display and connect at least one other. If you've got an iMac you can do the same and if you have a MacMini, MacStudio, or MacPro you can connect two or more screens to it. Now if you've never done this before it's kind of a whole new way of working to have more than one screen with your Mac. 

First, to find out how many screens you can connect to your Mac go to the Apple Menu and then go to System Settings. Then go to Help and then MacStudio Specifications. This will take you to the Specifications page for your Mac model. Scroll down there and look for Video Support. Here is where you'll find how many displays you can connect. But do note this includes any built-in screen. So if it says it supports two displays and you've got one built-in, say your MacBook, that means you can add one other. 

Now to connect another display to your Mac you can do it with one of the ports on your Mac. On modern Macs you can do it with either the Thunderbolt ports or the HDMI ports if you've got one. But you should always favor the Thunderbolt port. Those will talk natively to a screen. HDMI is really meant more for dealing with TV's to watch video. If the screen you bought has a Thunderbolt port then you can just connect Thunderbolt to Thunderbolt. But most screens will not have that. Instead they will have a Display Port and you can connect Thunderbolt to that. Thunderbolt speaks many languages. One of those is Display Port. It is very normal to connect your Thunderbolt port on your Mac to a Display Port port on your display and that's how you can connect them to get that additional screen. 

Now once you've got them connected there are a bunch of different ways you can control how the additional screen works. You can see here I've got two displays connected to my Mac. If I go to System Settings and then look on the left for Displays you can see it's there Plural Displays and when I select it I'll see a representation of each display at the top. Notice here, under one display I've got this little arrow pointing up showing that all of the settings below pertain to that display. I can click on the other display to switch to it and see the settings for that display. Notice that because these are two different kinds of displays they have different options. 

The first thing you should think about is your resolution for the display. You get this short list of five different resolutions here. But if you Control click, right click, or two-finger click in this section you can change to Show List. Then you get a list of all of them. You should do that so you really can see what options you've got. So for this display I've got it set to something very unusual because I use it for video tutorials. Typically you'll have it set to the default here. For this 4K display it's 1920 by 1080 which means it is using 4K but at high dots per inch. I could go all the up to 3840 by 2160 but that would make all the user interface elements really small. So instead the main way to use this display would be at the 1920 by 1080 default. You still get all the resolution but the interface elements look larger. If I go over to my Studio display I can similarly switch to Show List here and I can see the default is much higher as is the high end there because it is a 5K display. So items will basically see more or less the same size since these are both 27" displays. But you have full freedom to choose a resolution for each of the screens. Some people may want to get them looking as similar as possible. Others may want one at one resolution and one at another. 

Now in addition to this you have other options for the displays which will depend upon which one you have selected. If you look at the bottom you'll have the very important Arrange Button. If you have multiple displays you need to go here in order to set things up. Click on this it's going to give you a view of your two displays with the relative sizes depending on your resolution. You can move them around. So here I have my second display. Let's say it is actually sitting physically to my right, not to my left. I can move it over here and this changes where it sits which, of course, isn't actually how I have it here as you can see. This is the way I've got it. So now with these setup properly I can go between these two displays with my pointer very easily and naturally. 

If one display sits up higher than the other, as my Studio display actually does, you may want to actually adjust it, like this, to give you a better representation. Something that matches the pointer going from one to the other. You can even set one display to be on top of the other or underneath the other. If you've got more than two displays you can set them up to mimic the arrangement that you actually have physically on your desk. 

There's another very important things you can do here. That's switch which display is the primary. The way to do that is to look for the Menu Bar. Notice the Menu Bar is represented by this bar at the top of only one of the two displays. You can actually grab that and drag it to the other display. If you put it there then that becomes the primary display which is important in some situations but not all. It may not make any difference to you the way you use your Mac which one is considered the primary display. 

If you find these videos valuable consider joining the more than 3000 others that support MacMost Through Patreon. You get exclusive content, course discounts, and more. You can read about it at macmost.com/patreon. 

Now there is one more setting for a display. You can change its rotation. So I've got it set to standard so it fits the display and how it stands usually on the desk. Some displays allow you to rotate them or you can get a different stand for them and rotate them. You can actually set the rotation for most displays to 90  degrees, 180 degrees so upside down, or 270 degrees going in the other direction and have a display, say, that is vertical. For instance if I switch it like this you can then see how I've got this vertical display here which could be really useful depending upon how you use your Mac. For instance vertical could be really good for viewing long lists of things, files for instance. 

Now let's talk about using the two displays. When you use the two displays normally you can have a window on one and simply use the other display as a location where you can drag it to. So you can just drag a window between locations like this. So move something to the window that makes sense for you. You can create another window and have it on the other screen. They can be windows from the same app. They can be windows from different apps. So here I've got Notes on the right and the Finder window on the left. You can have multiple windows in both places. Dragging is the best way to do it but you also have the ability to go to Window and then you've got these Move Commands here. So I can move this to the other display, like that, and over here I can then move it back. 

Now let's take a look at how this affects Stage Manager. If you use Stage Manager, and I'll turn it on here, notice that each display has its own App Set. So here, for instance, I've got Notes and Photos and Calendar. On the other display I've got Shortcuts and Freeform and Reminders. They are separate. But if I were to drag one of these windows to the other display it moves the App Set there. If you try to drag the App Set itself to the other display it kind of works but it is a little awkward. But you're still basically dragging that window when you go to drag.

Now what about the Dock? You don't see the Dock on either display now because I've got it set so that it will appear only if my pointer is at the bottom. So automatically Hide & Show the Dock. If I turn that Off it will appear here on this display. But if I move my pointer to the other display and then move it down to the bottom you can see it jumps there. I can make it jump back and forth to each display by just moving my pointer to the bottom of each display. It's the same if I have Automatically Hide & Show Dock turned On. It's not there but it will appear at the bottom of whichever display I move my pointer to. 

Another aspect is Wallpaper. So if I go into System Settings here and then I go to Wallpaper I've got different sets of wallpaper for each display. So you can see here I've got a Control and I can pick which display I want to set the wallpaper for. But if I switch to Show On All Spaces you can see now that goes away. So, it's basically allowing you to switch wallpaper for both at the same time. 

Now one thing you may notice is that if you tried to put a window that's in-between, like this, it won't work. As soon as you release from dragging you only see it in the one window. The window where the pointer was when you released it. So if I move it over here and I release you can see the left side of this window in the left screen. If I move it over here you can see the right side of this window on the right screen. So this depends on a setting in System Settings. If you go into System Settings and then you go to Desktop & Dock, then go down to Mission Control, and here you've got Displays Have Separate Spaces. The default is to have it On. Then when you go into Mission Control, I'll use Control Up Arrow to do that, you could see I've got Desktop 1 here on the right screen and Desktop 2 on the left screen. I can actually create a second Desktop and it's only here on the right screen. I can switch between these on the right screen and the left screen remains unchanged. I can add another screen here and I can switch between those on the left screen separate from the ones on the right screen. So literally displays have separate spaces. Having that on allows you to treat each display as its own Desktop. It makes you feel like you basically are using two Macs at once. but with the difference of being able to drag things between them very easily.

However, let's look at what happens when you turn Off Displays Have Separate Spaces.  So, in order to switch Displays Have Separate Spaces you have to logout and log back in. So now I can take a window like this. I can move it halfway between displays and you can see the left half in the left screen and the right half in the right screen. If you have your displays lined up perfectly, and there's not much of a gap between them, it can be really useful. You could also expand a window to go all the way across both displays. Maybe it is not so useful here for a Finder window but imagine working, say, in Final Cut Pro this way. Now since the displays don't have separate spaces you can create a new space here and you can see both windows just show Desktop 1 and Desktop 2. So I can switch between spaces and you can see the screens act basically as one. I can launch Notes here and you can see how it appears on Desktop 2 and Desktop 1 has just the Finder window that stretches all the way across, like that. So they act as one space together. Also, notice the Menu Bar is always going to be on the main screen and the Dock is always going to be at the bottom of the main screen. It won't switch to the other screen under any circumstances. You could see you never get it there even if you launch an app to the other display, the Menu Bar for that app is still always on the primary display and the Dock will always stay on the primary display as well. 

So as you can see using multiple displays on your Mac is both very easy and very complicated. It's easy to setup and just use it. But if you want to control how things work exactly then there are a lot of different settings to look at. I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.