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Comment by mulmen | Hacker News Reader

I recently upgraded to a 43” 4k monitor and use it the way you describe. I’m not sure I am happy with it. The real estate is nice but it might be too much. UI elements end up very far away. I rarely need all that space.

I either need a bigger (deeper) desk to sit back farther or just a smaller monitor physically with the same resolution.

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What I found helped when I moved to a large 4k screen is when I stopped trying to eke out every last bit of space and started using my desktop as an actual desktop analogue again. Whereas I used to full screen, and snap to half or quarters of the screen, now I have a few core apps open that take up roughly a quarter, usually a browser and email, and other apps I open up and move around to organize as I feel the particular task warrants (generally some terminals that are all fully visible). I often drag the current thing I'm working on to the bottom half of. The screen so it's slightly closer and easier to see directly, and leave reference items or stuff I'm planning on revisiting shortly up top.

I also was thinking I didn't particularly like the large desktop and screen at first, but now that I treat it as a combined wallboard and desk space, I can't imagine going back (and using the large but not quite 4k monitor at my desk at the office always felt like a step backwards).

I do set default scaling for Firefox and Thunderbird to be about 125% of normal though, as I don't like squinting at small text. I generally like how small all the other OS widgets are though, so I don't scale the whole desktop.

Thanks for the input. I’m about a week in and that is the realization I am reaching. My window sizes are almost back to where they were before.

It has been an iterative process but I’m getting a handle on it.

I have a sit/stand desk, I’m considering moving my recliner in to the office and elevating the monitor. Working from a reclined position seems ideal but I also thought a 43” monitor was a good idea...

If you're on Windows, consider the fancyzones power toy. Break up your screens into an arbitrary set of maximizable zones. Highly recommend if the normal 4 corners isn't enough for you.

https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/tree/master/src/modul...

I'm on MacOS. I basically never maximize anything. I just resize the floating windows and put them where they make sense at the time. The dream would be doing this with the keyboard using something like i3. I have been tinkering with that on weekends but M-F I focus on paying work.

Check out Moom. You can save window layouts and replay, save window positions and apply them to any app, arbitrarily move, maximize to a range with a customizable margin, etc etc. https://manytricks.com/moom/

Does anyone know if there is something similar for Linux?

Depending on how exact of a similarity you're looking for, gTile for GNOME/Cinnamon might be of interest to you. I've also found PaperWM to be very productive.

I use gTile for gnome. I had to play around to find a setup that I like. I eventually settled on ignoring most of the features that were offered out of box. Now I have configured a few simple keyboard shortcuts.

For example, Super + Up Arrow will move a window into the central third section of the display. Pressing it again will expand the window a little bit.

Nice and simple. Makes working with large displays pleasant.

I use Rectangle. I’ve configured it with a few keyboard shortcuts that let me move a window into specific regions on the display. I use it to quickly have multiple non-overlapping windows.

I cannot imagine using a large display without it!

BetterTouchTool is _excellent_ for window placement/resizing; also can be triggered externally if you want to combine it with Alfred for Karabiner Elements (though you don't have to, you can define the triggers in BTT itself).

The 4K monitor at my office is a fair bit smaller than that, and I haven't used it since the COVID-19 epidemic sent me packing home. Since then I've just been using my laptop's built-in screen.

To be honest, I think I may stick to it. At first, the huge monitor was fun, and initial change to having less screen real estate was definitely a drag. But, now that I'm accustomed to it again, I'm finding that "I can fit less stuff on the screen at once" is just another way of saying, "it's harder to distract myself with extra stuff on the screen." My productivity is possibly up, and certainly no worse.

A major pain (literally) point for me with laptop screens is posture. My neck aches after a day of looking mostly down. I suppose an external keyboard and mouse would help but I would have to get a stand and blah blah.

Also for my particular workload real estate is very handy. I totally agree with there being some virtue to constraints but several times a day I really need the space.

That's a fair point. I do place my laptop on a stand and use an external keyboard and mouse, even when I'm working from home.

I think this really depends on the work you do, also. Pure development or content creation and I'm good with just a laptop. For research, with team communication, concurrent terminal sessions, debugging, management - I really do want at least 3 screens.

32” 4K is perfection, right in the sweet spot of size.

Agreed. My work monitor is a 32 or 34" ultrawide. It works well but I would really like more vertical real estate. I'm definitely shopping for 32-34" 4k displays right now.

3840x2880 34" would be so nice.

I've 32" @ 3840x2160, and it's a bless, I do coding and product design, my best tech acquisition in the last few years: https://www.benq.eu/en-eu/monitor/designer/pd3200u.html

That looks awesome. Pretty expensive from what I see after a quick search though. Does it have USB-C charging?

My previous monitor iterations have been LGs and I really like the USB-C charging capability, KVM and the OSD/buttons.

Got one of these in my cart right now: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B07NS7JKJH

I'm gonna sleep on it and double check the return policy on this 43".

Looks nice also, but I already have a 4k 32" Eizo Flexscan that I'm happy with - I'm after the 4:3 aspect ratio, everything just seems to go wider and wider these days.

Vertical is the reason I haven't upgraded from dual 1920x1200 (but of the time single anyway). Although I'm looking at 1440p mainly for 120hz+. (1440p at 30+")

This is the correct answer.

This. After doing some research, as far as I can tell a 32" 4K maximizes the amount of content you can see at one time within a comfortable viewing angle and without needing scaling to make text readable.

At typical desk monitor distances you shouldn't be able to see distinct pixels anyway.

43" 4k masterrace here - I beg to disagree.

This

Pretty much no maintstream UX has properly solve the large screen problem and instead we have to workaround it with smaller, multiple monitors.

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