Has anyone else switched from using 2 monitors to just using one big extra wide one? I've found it to be just as good as two, if not better. Maybe a little more expensive than buying two, but it's been worth it.
I personally feel that 21:9 ultrawides aren't quite as good as dual 16:9 displays for productivity. But they're fine. My biggest complaint is that most people would reasonable center their monitor on the desk. If you run 2x16:9, you can have one centered, and one off to the side, which allows you to mostly look straight forward and have a natural primary/secondary setup.
At 21:9, this setup is weirder; either you size your primary window (browser, code editor, etc) to ~16:9, left-or-right-align it, then you have to slightly crane your neck, or you center-align it and you're left with slivers of screen real-estate to the left-and-right. Or you can shrink the primary center window, approaching maybe a max of 7:9 for all three windows, which is maybe rarely useful for some applications. Or you can maximize the window, and in most applications you get tons of unused space. Or you can physically offset the monitor on your desk, which looks weird. There's just no solution that works "great" especially given these displays are oftentimes at a small premium over 2x16:9.
I think something like the Samsung Odyssey CRG9 would be much higher productivity in ultrawide, with its 32:9 aspect ratio. There, you could run a ~16:9 centered primary window, and still have ~8:9 canvases to the left and right, which is enough horizontal estate to comfortably have a terminal, Spotify, browser, etc. Its also relatively affordable (~$1100), though given you can find solid 1440p 27" monitors for $200-$300, you're effectively cross-shopping 3x16:9 displays. Still definitely a "luxury" buy. Its ultimately unclear to me that it would be better, and not just "differently similar".
50 hz happens to be the limit of hdmi 1.4b (at 3440x1440), it sounds like somewhere in your chain you have something that is running at legacy speeds. Could be your dock, could be your monitor, could be an active adapter cable.
I’d start by making sure you’re running DisplayPort and not HDMI. HDMI is more or less a “legacy” port these days, as far as workstation usage is concerned. And unlike DP there is no embedded HDMI support in USB-C Alt Mode so any sort of USB-C to HDMI adapter needs an active converter - which may be your hdmi 1.4 bottleneck.
(note that the "passive" HDMI mode that full-size displayports offer - aka DP++ - is an optional part of the spec. It's so widely implemented on full-size ports that most people don't realize it's optional, but embedded DisplayPort implementations like eDP or USB-C Alt Mode, Thunderbolt, etc don't implement this feature.)
I know there's the LG 5Kx2K monitor, but MacOS can't drive it at 6880x2880 which is the scaling option I'd want - It's less pixels in total than a Pro Display XDR, but I guess their logic is "if (width > 6k) { don't allow }"
I tried it on my M1 Mini + LG5K2K and soon disabled it again. The performance impact was noticeable in Lightroom and the display adapter config got in the way once I switched display input to my work laptop.
It should be possible - 6880x2880 is fewer pixels than the Pro Display XDR, which an M1 MacBook Air can drive perfectly well.
Fancyzones makes this much more tolerable but misses a few minor scenarios.
I replaced two 1440p monitors with a single ultrawide and complemented it with a tablet on my desk showing hdmi through deskreen, usually showing a chat window. I guess technically I still have two displays but it takes up less desk space overall.
On the positive side the displays are centered in front of me better and I can fiddle with the tablet placement much more easily than a real monitor. I've experienced neck strain working for extended periods with windows on the edge of the farthest dual monitor.
- The logical “partitioning” of workspace between displays is a nice tool for organization, particularly when combined with Spaces/virtual desktops
- I work from home, so my main display does double duty between work and games, which is a problem with the latter with many games having bad or lackluster ultrawide support
- Ultrawides restrict display selection quite considerably and often require concessions on things like color performance, backlight bleed, pixel response times (especially curved ultrawides, which seem to all use VA panels which are known for smearing and slow response times)
Use a better window manager.
I also just don’t like micromanaging my window arrangement or having the WM try to do it automatically (and usually get it wrong).
How is that solved by adding a monitor? If I used two (I don't any more) I would still use a (better than macOS default) window manager.
So in my typical usage, secondary/tertiary/etc windows go into purposed virtual desktops on the second monitor — e.g. one virtual desktop for documentation, another for chat, etc. This allows me to swap out the sets of less important windows independent of the main display’s workspace, with practically zero management overhead (just assign apps to virtual desktops during initial setup).
The extent of third party window management I use is Moom, which I use to snap maybe 3-5 windows across my entire workspace into specific locations/sizes. Something that emulates a Linux tiling WM like Amethyst would drive me insane.
What are some of the alternatives that you would recommend?
It's probably the simplest one. Draw the shape you want on a grid, assign a global hotkey to each shape (fullscreen, top half, bot half, left, right, etc.), press the hotkey to move current window into that shape. Press the same hotkey again to move it between monitors.
It's funny how you get so used to your own dev environment and all the global hotkeys you might have and then completely take it for granted until you use a computer with it.
On Linux I use i3.
I'm not sure which is better. I like there's no divider in the middle of my display area! Work is giving me two 27" monitors so we'll see how it goes.
The only complaint, which is minor but annoys me several times a day, ... It takes several seconds for the Mac to wake up. Meaning, I have a PC also connected to the LG monitor vs DisplayPort. If I switch over and press a key Windows wakes up immediately. When I switch back to Mac and press a key it's easily 3-4 seconds before I can even start typing. I'm pretty sure that's USB-C/Thunderbolt only issue and if I used Displayport or something that problem might go away but still surprised Apple finds this acceptable give their focus on UX. I guess I get the number of people using 2 devices is low. But, even if I don't switch away and just walk away but leave it on Mac, when I come back, it takes 3-4 seconds to wake up vs Windows which is instant.
Note: "wake up" is the wrong word because the Mac has not started sleeping. I have processes running. I hear notifications, etc. It's just something to with getting things to display again.
I've got it just close enough to me to hit my max comfortable FOV (so I don't have to crane my neck to see parts of the screen) while still being unable to see pixels.
It's got a USB C port that can do 4k 120Hz (which is awesome) and puts out just enough charging power to keep my Air from draining while I'm using it.
At native 4K things area little small, but moving the MacOS scaling down one or two ticks is perfect.
Hard to imagine a more perfect setup, personally.
The few times I’ve used a 49 ultrawide, meh, I’m not impressed but it’s better than just the internal. I’d probably need to reset the window manager to do 1x4, rather than using thirds.
I now have a single 27" 4k monitor which has better text rendering and no neck ache.
I will buy a 27" 5k if Apple sell one.
My M1 Air runs my ultrawide at 60hz and is buttery smooth.
https://www.microcenter.com/product/639902/lg-34gp950g-34-2k...
My other ultra-wide is an ASUS PG348Q. It's crazy how that monitor felt huge when I got it, but it just seems tiny now.
You can test you got the full resolution by doing:
system_profiler SPDisplaysDataType | awk '/Resolution/{print $2, $3, $4}'I wish that when you shared an app window, Zoom would let you scale that to fit the full screen share. That way you could present a reasonable image of a window to viewers while using an ultra-wide monitor.
If I had another window open for chat/notes/emails I can still have that at half my ultrawide and just deal with a bit of overlap on my end
Ended up using OBS and sharing the obs preview window instead. This lets me add fun gifs and overlays as well to my screen for loading or success.