So you’ve got an external monitor to use with your MacBook, or you’ve upped your game and got yourself two of them. The encoding will never be the same, I’m telling you. The same goes for writing or research. With all that room, you can have a lot of fun with lots of windows arranged however you like.
But when you attach the display to your Mac, it defaults to mirroring. And that’s just the beginning of all the things you need to change before your great productivity dreams come true. To make it easier for you, I’ve rounded up all the pitfalls of multiple monitors in this article. These include how to use your Mac in clamshell mode, how to configure multi-monitor displays, find great panorama wallpapers, and most importantly, how to manage windows.
Connector Note: MacBooks come with Thunderbolt ports, but they are backward compatible with mini DisplayPort. Also, mDP to HDMI converters are pretty cheap. And while I don’t have any personal experience with them, you can also find a USB to HDMI adapter if you want to attach more than one monitor.
Set clamshell mode
If you have a large external monitor and want to connect it to your MacBook and attach a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse instead of creating a multi-monitor setup, you’ll need to use clamshell mode.
All you do is connect your display to your MacBook via the Thunderbolt adapter and connect the power cable. Close the lid and your MacBook now acts as a desktop CPU. The most important part here is the power cable, without it, your Mac will go to sleep as soon as the lid is closed.
Default display
If you want to change the default display from your MacBook’s display to one of the connected displays, go to System Preferences -> Display and you will see a Arrange navigation. This lists all available screens. First, make sure Mirror screen option is deselected.
In there, you’ll see the menu bar located on your MacBook’s screen. Just click and drag it over any of your external monitors to make it the default display.
display arrangements
in one Arrange screen, you can drag the screens around to change position. If you’re attaching the external display on top and the MacBook display on the bottom, you can go ahead and drop it on top.
The displayed sizes are scaled accordingly. So if you have 27 and 24 inch monitors connected to your 13 inch MacBook, you should have no problem figuring out which one. Duplicate your physical monitor setup in this window to make switching between multiple monitors really easy.
Workspace Management
Thanks to Mavericks, the multi-monitor capabilities of Macs have improved exponentially. Every new desktop now has its own workspace, and you can create different desktops or full-screen apps for each.
This is great if you plan to use a media-only monitor, for monitoring your website, or for social media updates. Your Mac will also remember these workspaces so you don’t have to start from scratch each time.
Multi-monitor wallpapers
When it comes to multi-monitor wallpapers, the Mac is a bit weird. When you right click on the desktop and select Change screen wallpaper the application will actually display the wallpaper selection window on each different screen.
Of course, there are apps that make the process of applying a panorama wallpaper easy, but most of them come for a fee. But you can still do it for free; All you have to do is download pre-cropped panoramic wallpapers for each screen. You can do it with Wallpaperfusion or dualmonitorbackgrounds.com.
Once you’ve downloaded the cropped wallpapers, select that folder from the sidebar and select the relevant images for each screen.
Window management with BetterTouchTool
And now we have a serious problem with Macs that only amplify themselves as you add more screens. Window management. Windows has great window management (I guess it should be true to the name) where everything is tight and snaps into place.
The Mac’s more liberal philosophy also spills over to window management, where it can’t be. You can’t throw a window aside with a gesture, telling it to take up exactly 50% of your screen like you can in Windows with the Aero Snap feature.
Wait – actually, you can. Thanks to a great free app called BetterTouchTool. I’ve written about it in detail before but it’s basically an app that lets you create custom gestures for your trackpad, keyboard, and mouse (more on that below) and as a cherry at the top, adds the same window snapping features.
Once you have activated Window capture feature from the pop-up and given app access, it’s time to take a snap!
Just click and drag any window to the left or right edge so that it takes up half of the screen. Furthermore, you can go to the corners to allocate your window to the relevant quarter of the screen.
Finally, dragging a window onto the menu bar will expand the window on the current desktop (not to be confused with fullscreen mode). The best part is that the app gives you a small preview of exactly how much space the window will take up while you’re still holding the mouse over the hot corner.
As you can imagine, this window snapping doesn’t always work between multiple monitors. But fear not, for there are alternatives and they will be discussed below.
Manage windows with multiple monitors with keyboard shortcuts
As I said above, BetterTouchTool allows you to map specific actions to touchpad, keyboard, and mouse shortcuts. And BetterTouchTool has a great library of window management actions. You know this place is going.
From all the great action available, here are the highlights.
- Move window one space/screen left or right
- Maximize the window to the next screen
- Move window to next screen
- In addition, all window capture shortcuts and many more can be turned into actions
That’s right, using a keyboard/mouse shortcut or just a touchpad gesture you can move the current window to the next monitor or make it fullscreen when you get there. .
As you can see below, I am unable to dock the window to the right side of the screen. But thanks to some preconfigured keyboard shortcuts, I am able to do so. Using the same keyboard shortcuts, I can also switch the window to another monitor.
You will find a lot of apps to do these things. In my research, I found apps that cost between $5 and $20 specifically for window management. But I’m telling you, you don’t need them. BetterTouchTool will take some time to set up but once it’s done it will be your setup. You can set any kind of crazy keyboard shortcuts or trackpad gestures to snap or move windows. It will be personal and intuitive, and it will work.
This is what I told everyone after introducing BetterTouchTool and I will say it to you too.
Go crazy.
A simpler alternative to BetterTouchTool
If you find the feature set overwhelming and don’t want constant BTT customization, try Spectacle. It’s a small pre-programmed app with (customizable) keyboard shortcuts for the same kind of window snapping feature of BTT. There is also a keyboard shortcut to switch the window to another monitor.
Categories: How to
Source: thpttranhungdao.edu.vn/en/
