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Comment by fatnoah | Hacker News Reader

When work from home started, I went down this road of madness, and have a drawer full of docks that didn't work properly for my Macbook (properly is defined as works as a USB hub, connection to wired network, charges my Macbook, and lets me connect an external 4k display @ 60Hz). A Plugable Thunderbolt 3 Dock has carried me for 2 years so far.

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I also have a Plugable TB3 dock. I don't know if it's the dock, or the laptop... but MacOS won't remember my monitor layout at all. Even if the computer just goes to sleep, it wakes up and forgets my monitor layout. Gotta fix it multiple times a day sometimes. Sometimes one of the monitors doesn't show up at all, and I gotta unplug and plug it back in. Sometimes doing that, the computer will actually get the proper monitor layout on like the 4th try.

Interesting. I have no issues like that. I've even changed jobs, so I'm actually on my second Macbook with this hub, and my Mac remembers window positions and monitor layouts every time (knocking on wood so I don't jinx myself). I rarely power all the way down, so usually it's usually just sleep mode for me. I am using the USB-C connection for the monitor if that makes a difference.

Also have the Pluggable tb3 dock and use 2 external monitors via it (+ another separate monitor).

What you described sometimes happens to me too, but definitely not multiple times a day.

If you don’t have it yet, I recommend purchasing SwitchResX software, as Apple’s own display management tool is garbage. What you can do is create custom “Display Sets” which are arrangements of monitors and custom settings/resolutions which you can then turn on/off. Ocassionaly a monitor will disappear, but then doing a “Detect Displays” in SwitchResX usually fixes it for me. That software has largely made a lot of my monitor issues like saving layouts go away.

I used to have this problem with my Plugable dock and managed to permanently fix it by changing the orientation of the USB-C cable. The pins are not perfectly symmetric, and some devices don't handle one orientation correctly. You might have luck experimenting with the rotation.

My understanding is that the problem with high bandwidth/resolution setups over displayport (which may not be your use case) is in your mac, not in your hub. Older comment thread here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29214726

I'm totally not suprised by this. I'm using USB-C between the hub and the monitor, and that seems to be working fine, so I basically haven't thought too much about it.

I had 4 monitors going w/Plugable products. I've since gone down to 2 and I would recommend Plugable to anyone looking for dual monitors on a mac.

I am assuming you're using Caldigit? I've had good enough luck, I'd consider their TS4 hub.

The brand of my dock is Plugable.

I also have a Plugable Thunderbolt 3 Dock, currently powering two displays

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