Most of the problems of the author would be solved by installing BetterDisplay: https://betterdisplay.pro/
[flagged]
That app seems to be both free (as in beer) and free (as in freedom).
Multiple Displays on a Mac Sucks
71–80 of 314 posts
Re: Multiple Displays on a Mac Sucks
#72> The Mac operating system still Just. Fucking. Sucks. at remembering where windows were, when relaunching apps. I agree and it's confounding. For me it's even worse: when plugging back into my home office after some work on the road, it doesn't remember the window positions associated with that setup, and I have to reorganize my dozens of windows away from the laptop screen again. I've solved this through a 3rd-part…
Another option that works for me: https://cordlessdog.com/stay/
Re: Multiple Displays on a Mac Sucks
#73> The Mac operating system still Just. Fucking. Sucks. at remembering where windows were, when relaunching apps. I agree and it's confounding. For me it's even worse: when plugging back into my home office after some work on the road, it doesn't remember the window positions associated with that setup, and I have to reorganize my dozens of windows away from the laptop screen again. I've solved this through a 3rd-part…
My company has enforced frequent updates of browsers and other software set up, so we are relaunching apps very often, and this drives me crazy. It feels like someone is walking over to your desk and moving everything around, just to annoy you.
Is it a Mac thing to keep applications open? I usually close mine as soon as I'm not actively using them
Re: Multiple Displays on a Mac Sucks
#74I don't get why the screens sometimes swap around. It makes no sense to me that sometimes when I log in, my extra screens are switched and I have to move all the contents. The machine has the serial numbers of the screens, and it knows what ports they are connected to. Why can they not just use that information to remember where stuff is supposed to be? The other thing that annoys me is that it changes the background…
Check this [1] HN post from 10 days ago, the first problem listed, "Dual monitors swapped positions" and the cause ("The problem comes from vendors who flash the same exact firmware with the same EDID to multiple monitors in the same batch.") :D
[1] Weird monitor bugs people sent me in the last 5 years (2022) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40038759
Re: Multiple Displays on a Mac Sucks
#75No issues here (14" M1 MBP + Studio Display). A lot of the weird issues with multi-displays went away on the Intel to ARM transition. The author is using an old Intel iMac Pro.
There are of course window logistics problems but they seem to be manageable and Apple do the least surprising thing I find.
I would suggest the author tries using a windows laptop with 1920x1200 at 125% scaling and an external 4k display at 150% scaling and the associated weirdness. They will come crawling back to the mac in tears of joy very quickly. Literally at the moment all my icons have gone back to 100% scaling and are tiny. The entire rest of the display is scaled fine, apart from one app which is 100% as well. This is every fucking day on windows. Edit: also spending 20 minutes replugging the damn monitor because it doesn't detect it the first time either (Dell P2723QE)
Re: Multiple Displays on a Mac Sucks
#76My way of making it all nice and not a hard chore: use a tiling window manager - I used to use Amethyst but screen sharing makes it go wild in some cases, so now I use yabai; I never quit any app so if I close something I'm rebooting in which case what can you expect?; as many apps as possible need to be full screen so I'm actually using many virtual desktops, more than multiple displays; keyboard shortcuts in my memory to navigate to where I want to go and to throw app windows from one display to another, move focus and so on; dock always at the bottom with autohide for reasons pointed out by OP.
But by far the most important thing I remember to do is to organise and move things based on the work I'm doing at that moment.
I normally have three displays: MBP to side (right side, so I can use the trackpad near my keyboard if I want, although I also have an external trackpad in home office), and 2 x large monitors, one directly in front, one to the left angled in slightly.
Focus app - web browsing (like right now), email, doc writing, coding, whatever - that's coming onto the large central display.
Left display is stuff I want to keep near but might be a distraction. Documentation, slack, email if I'm meant to be focusing on other things.
MBP is basically a video conferencing display (camera is right above the screen, feels natural), perhaps a terminal for command line stuff, and so on.
I'm rearranging desktops and moving them around at the start of each focused block of work (which is typically every hour or so), and there are some "standard" layouts I use when doing meetings/calls.
When my MBP is out on the road with me, one virtual desktop for web, one for email, one for calendar, one for slack, one for code editor, and so on...
TLDR: I made some tooling choices, and am prepared to spend a couple of minutes to move things around and make sure you're setup for focusing on a task I'm about to dive into. The key thing is I'm feeling comfortable for the task, not comfortable for all tasks and everything is always in the same state.
Re: Multiple Displays on a Mac Sucks
#77> The Mac operating system still Just. Fucking. Sucks. at remembering where windows were, when relaunching apps. I agree and it's confounding. For me it's even worse: when plugging back into my home office after some work on the road, it doesn't remember the window positions associated with that setup, and I have to reorganize my dozens of windows away from the laptop screen again. I've solved this through a 3rd-part…
Works fine for me. I sit down, plug my MBP 14" into the studio display, close the lid and carry on where I was. It does a reasonable job of window placement.
Re: Multiple Displays on a Mac Sucks
#78I've used multiple displays back when monitors were still pretty small in size but i can't find a good reason anymore to use more than one for a developer in the age of 27"/5K. It's more distracting than productive.
I'm very happy with my built in monitor on my 16" Macbook Pro. Brightness, HDR, local dimming, retina and 120 Hz. I have yet to find an external monitor with all those specs.
Re: Multiple Displays on a Mac Sucks
#79I seriously have none of these problems which makes me wonder what‘s wrong with me / my perception. (Intel and Apple Silicon MBPs, two external Dell Displays.) As a Mac user of decades I rarely use the dock though, but mostly shortcuts and spotlight.
The issues depend a lot on the displays (some displays don't expose a serial number, or have the same serial for each display), or how it's connected - Thunderbolt dock? USB dock? HDMI? (what adapter?) DisplayPort? (again, what adapter?)
Re: Multiple Displays on a Mac Sucks
#80In my own case, I use a 49-inch LG ultrawide (5120 X 1440).
I vastly prefer that, to multiple displays.
Has me spoiled rotten. Even though I have an MBP, I hate undocking it.