Why I stopped using an external monitor

When I was a kid in the 1980s I really wanted to draw comics for a living. I spent ages sat at the family dining room table pouring my heart into little comic strips like the ones in my favorite comic books. I'd try so hard to draw as well as the artists I admired but I could never quite get there. No matter how hard I tried I couldn't match the level of detail, clarity, and expression they did.

When I was older I learned that comic books are drawn on much bigger paper than the comic. Part of the production process is to shrink the drawings to comic book size. Drawing bigger comics is a lot easier. I was trying to draw the comic and mimic the rest of the production process as well.

The same is true for dev work. Constraining yourself to what the end user has is throwing away a ton of benefits from having access to better tools. By all means test your work on a similar machine but don't throw up artificial barriers to doing good work if you don't need to. You're just trying to go straight to the final version. That doesn't work.

Doesn't make any sense, this would be like an audio engineer getting rid of their studio monitors and mixing on AirPods because that's what people listen on.

What they do instead is use their multi-thousand dollar speaker and room setup for mixing (because it is better!) but then check the end result on airpods, car stereos, etc.

Just test on the resolutions you care about, no need to cripple your development setup full time.

Its funny. I have programmed for a decade and at no point I have ever found that an external monitor was the solution to my problems. My coworkers think I'm crazy, but I do all development on a 15' macbook. My path to efficiency and ergonomic work has always been to become more familiar with the keyboard shortcuts for navigating windows and tabs. Along with Spectacle, Vimium, and tree-style tabs, I have never wanted for a second monitor. Mostly I find it annoying because I forget where I put my applications if I have two monitors.

My overall mantra at work is that I can only do one thing a a time if I want to do it well. I feel in a sense limiting myself to one viewport helps reinforce this behavior.

This article is a good reminder that there is no such thing as one-size-fits-all. His setup would be horrible for me. I currently have three 1920x1080 monitors in an L configuration (two in the middle, one to the right) and it works great for me- because I need to see a lot of windows at once. I tell everyone I work with "you need at least two monitors" because for our work, it's true. Clearly a different case with OP.

I tried this as well for about 8 months and ended up going back to an external monitor setup. Why? Health reasons. The ergonomics of using a laptop everyday is detrimental to your posture. Being hunched over and looking down at a laptop all day is not healthy. You can still have bad posture with an external monitor but now these risks are avoidable if you are disciplined enough. With a laptop you really have no choice but to have poor posture.

Small note, depending on location and situation. If you're in a work situation, not using an external monitor could cause issues for you employer, even if you're working from home. Some countries, like Denmark, have laws that require employees to be given, and use, external monitors, keyboards and pointing devices. For most people being hunched over a laptop for eight hours a day will result in neck, back, and/or wrist pain. Your employer could be fined if you do not use an external monitor.

A former coworker of mine had to be repeatedly remind to use the provided equipment. In the end it was agree that everything would sit on his desk, ready to use, in case of a visit from the government office of workplace safety.

Multiple monitors are a force multiplier to Alt+Tab.

Yes, I can compile a formal business document from disparate programs and formats all on one screen and there is a bit of an advantage - mouse movement - but that's trivial compared to spatial awareness. Getting something from Excel into PowerPoint while checking Outlook incoming stuff and shooting the cow patties on Teams is a different modus operandi. That's why I relate what I do to being more like an F1 machine than a long-haul key puncher. When I'm on, I'm burning gas and hauling ass.

When I'm off, I'm decompressing in ways that are not exactly customary.

> Hell, some of these users were being shown the tablet-based view of the applications since our breakpoints were so ridiculously large. Yikes.

I used a 1366x768 monitor on my desktop for a couple of years and this was a huge annoyance - almost every single site assumed that i was on a tablet. Firefox allowed me to "zoom out" the sites which helped somewhat but then pretty much everything was a combination of tiny letters surrounded by tons of empty space.

Worse, i remember checking various stat sites at the time and 1366x768 was the most common non-mobile resolution!

I'm still kind of at a loss. Why not just exclusively use the laptop screen as the development monitor and the larger monitor for... everything else?

Randy Pausch, a former Computer Science Professor at University of Virginia who passed away from Pancreatic Cancer, gave a popular lecture on Time Manage in the last few months of his illness. In his lecture he proposed a monitor set up I still use today. What I love about this method is that one quickly learned which monitors does what and so there are fewer brain cycles to decide where to put your windows.

The Three monitor method:

- One for reading. ( documents, reference material, requirements)

- One for writing. ( code, writing emails, creating anything)

- One for time. (calendar app always open.)

He mentions it roughly 49 min into the video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blaK_tB_KQA

I stopped when I switched to a 5K iMac. 5120x2880 is enough for things like side by side browsers and editors, and I use the excellent Rectangle app to easily align them in perfect ½, ⅓, or ¼ width of the screen (I use Firefox’s excellent responsive design mode for exactly matching client devices).

I think that many web developers would benefit from testing on slow hardware, bad monitors and shoddy internet.

I work on a 2017 Macbook 12" unless I'm at home. Some websites literally don't work on that resolution.

Other websites don't work on hotel Wi-Fi.

Others are unreadable on budget laptop screens.

It's good to remember that a lot of the world isn't a Silicon Valley office.

I gave up on external monitors a long while ago. When you have to have them, it's indicative of a workflow that needs to be fiddly about the data you're working on, usually either manually monitoring a lot of stuff, or parsing things on one screen(docs) to do things on the other(editors). Some jobs do need it, and I'm not denying that, but if you're doing something where you control more of the environment ground-up and dipping into a variety of digital tools for parts of the workflow, going with paper notebooks and the phone as the second screen can be a lot better; Gridded or dotted 8x5" or A5 spiral notebooks are very convenient for having "enough" visual structure in a document and they aren't particularly more or less constrained than toting around a second monitor. Prop them up on a bookstand so they're at an ergonomic height, and give yourself a color multipen so you can add highlighting and organization by color. Do your tasks by documenting the plan in the book and specific editing functions or build processes you plan to use so that during execution, you have both a plan and a cheat sheet, and it's always in the same place. When you need to share, take a photo.

> I'm able to instantly understand frustrations of everyday users while developing new features or tweaking existing UIs. Being able to advocate for our end-users by using legit use cases is extremely helpful. (Removes the "design by gut-feeling" mistakes)

This same reasoning could be used in reverse; because designers/devs aren’t using multi-monitor UIs or switch regularly between multi-monitor and laptop-only is why we can’t have a good experience. Like on macOS, why won’t it remember the window size from the last time it was connected to a larger screen.

I think a lot of user frustration is caused by front end developers having relatively new, well-specced laptops connected to one or more nice monitors, but as the author pointed out, an awful lot of users have 768 x 1366, which usually implies low specs all around, so kudos to this guy for caring for his users in this way.

Related tip for developing the visuals for an in-person talk: use a 13” or less laptop to put together and rehearse slides and demos. If it’s readable on that, it should be readable in a big conference room on a mediocre projector.

For a long while I used just the 15"/16" MacBook without any external displays. I find multiple displays to be bad for my concentration or my neck and eyes (too much movement...)

For web development, Chrome's responsive design mode with free viewport scaling is great - like testing a 4K TV display resolution in a half of a browser window. Wish Firefox had a similar scaling mode...

Web dev here - I use to have three monitors early on in my career. Two side by side and one vertical for a terminal. Then eventually two and now just one large 32” 4k UHD one.

Having one has definitely helped me focus better. Left side of the screen is the browser and the right is VSCode with a terminal in the bottom half. It’s my ideal setup as of last 5 years.

Personally, I use a single 38" curved monitor (3480x1600). I have old man eyes but this allows me to have up to 4 vertically split tmux panes with at least 80 cols in each pane for programming in vim. I find multi-monitor very distracting, but I'd never go back to a single 1080p screen at this point.

3x27" 4k monitor at 150% scaling seems to be the sweet spot for me. It strikes the balance of text clarity and desktop resolution. I use the center one most of the time, and the one on my right for supporting tasks. My left one monitors stuff (terminals, sysmon, etc.) as well as my music. I use virtual desktops to separate the task I'm working on. I couldn't go back to a single screen, much less 1366x768.

I'm often dividing my center and right monitor into vertical splits (supported by Windows snap feature).

I tried for a long, long time to use a tiling WM and realized it is just too many compromises in order to use it efficiently. Many applications are not really compatible unless you're willing to switch your entire workflow to using mostly CLI applications. If you're using a dynamic one, you're still moving windows based on priority, and on a regular tiling WM (i.e., i3), you still need to move windows around. Mouse is still the fastest way to resize/move a window.

With window snapping, this is more or less a non-issue these days (Windows 11 is still sufficient when it comes to multiple monitors as I'm able to move my window from the right one to my left with Win + Arrow). I can still alt-tab.

I can't use a 40" 4k screen because it's too large, and it's more about division of screens than resolution alone. I also like the improved clarity that 150% scaling brings me on a 27" screen.

There might be a distribution of neuronal types (and work requirements) out there but I find small monitors suffocating.

Combined with the reduced control of a touchpad versus a mouse and the superior tactile feel of a mechanical keyboard this makes working on laptops a distinctly degraded experience for me.

To me, the real benefit of an external monitor is not the display size, but the height and position. Compared to a laptop-on-table setup, an external display allows the screen to be positioned higher to match the height of the eyes, while also keeping the keyboard lower to match the height of the arms. This makes working for extended periods more comfortable and reduces shoulder and neck pain.

When I cannot afford an external display, I have found that using a laptop stand and an external keyboard can help a lot.

to me this reads like the author was simply too frustrated with their wm's handling of large / secondary monitors and post-facto justified the switch to only one monitor

One area which an external monitor (or high resolution) helps a lot with is UI or frontend programming. It's a huge pain to play with the chrome or Firefox debugger and have to jump between windows to get feedback.

When it comes to backend or non-UI work, a laptop is just fine.

I need 3 monitors or I am crippled, and the god awful alt+tab management of MacOS which is imposed on me contributes a lot to this need.

And to be fair, you can tell me anything you want, I will not believe that you are as efficient with a single monitor as with at least 2. I used a single one for 6 months in 2020 and I lost a lot of productivity.

Actually I do not believe it to the point that if I was in a position of power over someone who refuses to use more than one, I would get rid of them.

This is very personal sort of thing.

In my case, I don't think I could go laptop-screen-exclusive because I've become too accustomed to my monitor being held at exactly the right height and distance from my eyes with a VESA arm. This can be done with laptops too (and in fact, my laptop is on a VESA ARM via adapter itself), but it wouldn't be particularly comfortable to use as a primary monitor at the same distance.

As far as tiling window managers go, I haven't been able to make them work for me on any size of screen. It probably boils down to the sorts of programs one uses in their day to day but I found that the auto-tiling does the wrong thing frustratingly often and enough programs are opted out into floating mode that it makes more sense to stick with a more traditional floating WM with optional tiling.

I do however agree that smaller screens should be a bigger priority, but this is done easily enough without giving up a desktop monitor. Sidecar on an iPad works nicely for this, and there are plenty of portable screens that are just laptop panels in a chassis that you can hook up. There's also no shortage of bare laptop panels on eBay that one can assemble with a driver board and 3D printed case.

I switched from dual monitor to a single 2560x1440/quad HD monitor when I switched to using the i3 tiling window. manager.

I think I can picture the issue they ran into with a 4k monitor, but I do not have that issue at QHD. It's enough width to display a document or narrow browser window next to my IDE and a couple of terminals beneath the IDE. Ideal setup for me personally.

I've never really cared much about my physical dev environment setup. I've been programming since 1983, professionally since 1996. There are very few systems I haven't used, ranging from a commodore 64 connected to an old blurry black&white TV to Sun workstations and DEC alphas and SGIs to PCs and laptops of every conceivable size and make to multi-monitor setups, trackballs, trackpads, nubs, mice, standing desks, sitting desks, couch, cross-legged on the floor, in an airplane seat, at the kitchen table...

And none of it has ever mattered. As long as I have the software I like and can see what I'm typing or looking up, it's all good. And since most development happens between the ears with the odd short burst of typing, where and how you dump the fruits of your mental labor doesn't make a meaningful enough difference to worry about it.

The data in this article mentions that the most popular resolutions for desktop were 1920×1080 (9.94%) and 1366×768 (6.22%). The numbers don't really add up. What are the other possible resulutions? I'd presume that these two would the biggest percentage!

I think of all the people who have/might ditch an external author, the specific OP here has the best use case.

UX/UI designers are definitely #1 among the people who should use computers in a way closer to their target audience.

But also using a tiling window manager makes using a tiny single monitor extremely effective.

1. There is almost no wasted space. Almost the entire space is used for your content. It maximizes screen space better than any other paradigm there.

2. Automatic and effective filing meant I was far more likely to open windows besides each other much more rapidly (and way more conveniently) than I could arrange windows between monitors.

3. I haven’t used DWM, but i3 instead, and it was the only software where multiple desktops actually felt almost as effective as having actual multiple windows.

The low graphical requirements of tiling window managers (I’m pretty sure their rendering is way faster because the display is so much simpler) meant that they could render a new workspace faster than I could turn my head from 1 monitor to another, and easy KB shortcuts made it ridiculously easy to switch between desktops.

Let’s say I was copying 1 document’s text manually to another, it was probably quicker for me to type, hit Alt+2 read what I needed to copy next, hit Alt+1 to go back to the writing workspace and continue typing, than it was for me to type, turn my head to the other monitor, read, and then turn my head back to the 1st monitor to continue typing.

I strongly prefer having only one screen no larger than 19 inches with a pixel density between about 110ppi and 150ppi. Why? Neck and eye strain with all other configurations I've tried. Also small font sizes really shine when the pixels are that large.

I have a single 40" ultrawide, and I am much, much more productive on it than on laptop screens. I can usually have three or four windows tiled side-by-side, usually with two working code windows and a third for browsing documentation or viewing results or a terminal. It's hard to beat that.

The 40" ultrawide format is nice because of the vertical space compared to other ultrawides. It's a 32" monitor with a little extra width.

And because it has a built-in KVM, I have a single webcam, keyboard, mouse, and speaker setup for my work and home computers that I can switch between with a keyboard shortcut.

Waiting for the article about why he downgraded his camera to a moldy potato

I have to switch from my 43" screen to my 15" laptop when travelling and I always hate it. I find it so much more productive to have everything open at once and not have to tab between windows.

I have a similar setup to this, with a Thinkpad x230 and a budget 1600x900 HP monitor, and I also use dwm. The second monitor allows me to work with items that I don't need to interact with frequently.

For example, I can display the PDF output of a LaTeX document on one monitor while keeping vim and a PDF of a book I'm reading on the other monitor. If I only had one monitor, my productivity would suffer because I would have to constantly switch between windows.

I respect people who really dial in their personal setups and I am also a little at a loss about what to say about these kinds of posts.

As the author says - this seems like a highly personal preference that they spent some time and energy getting to. I'm happy for them and fully believe they've found their optimal setup. And, because it's so individual, I am not sure what to do with the post.

It's absolutely true - and the author is aware - that end users and developers use their computers in different ways. It's also true that setting up your workspace to be more like an average user will give you some insight* into their situation. Finally it's true that most developers don't do that because they try to optimize their workspaces for their productivity and most people find adding screen real estate does that.

I enjoy reading someone else's journal as much as the next person - and I'm always surprised when I see how other people react to pretty personal musings.

* This is kind of untrue - statistical outputs are statistically true but they are conjoined with their other qualities. You won't "be in someones shoes" with a low-res screen until you are also sharing their: OS, usecases, application set, etc.

I maintain the cloud infrastructure at my company and I went the other way around: from laptop only to an 3 screens (laptop on a stand + two screens on the side at a 90 degree angle). When I need a browser window at the right resolution, I just drag it to my laptop screen.

The two vertical screens are configured a little different. Vertical screens are terrible for screensharing. For that reason I virtually split one of them in 2 parts (using xrandr). This gives me two square screens that are ideal for screen sharing.

So, virtually, I have 4 screens in 3 different sizes and have no issue assigning stuff to them. The vertical screen is always used for Emacs and different chat apps used for work (have a workspace with all chats stacked vertically, so I can keep tabs easily). One of the square screens is used for browsing, while the other is used for screen sharing (or general browsing/terminal when my screen is not shared). The laptop screen is often used as a scratch pad (short term stuff).

I know it might be a bit overblown, but it works well for me. I really like the fact that I can run multiple things and monitor their output, without interrupting my workflow.

I get the graphic designer specific reasons, but I've noticed the same sort of trend in myself upon switching to a tiling wm. The truth is you just don't need multiple monitors with a tiling wm. Space gets wasted in a normal stacking window managers, and you have to manually and meticulously lay your windows out. Most people don't have the patience and just full screen everything. Having layouts optimized automatically, or with a few quick key presses makes things easier, and you wind up actually using multiple workspaces. Switching workspaces is easier than looking around at different monitors.

I do believe that people that use multiple monitors are either showing off or could benefit greatly from tiling window managers, because they'd spend less money on monitors, and less e waste and all that. Very few people have needs that actually demand multiple monitors, a fraction of the number of people that have them.

Nice, I like this idea here. Broadly, even though my main is a 27" 4K, I now more or less can't stand using two monitors, except for specific use cases where it "makes sense," e.g. when I teach classes online, and I need "my space" vs "what the students are seeing."

I also stop using dual monitors when switching to dwm (for 10 minutes) then awesome. Because fiddling with config files to get dual monitors + tags right and adapting to a tiling workflow with two screens was too much to handle for me. And I didn't find much use for the second monitor after a while (mail ? messaging ? it was just an secondary interface to distractions).

It made my life easier because I don't have to manage the second monitor ("am I sharing the good screen ?", "why does the main monitor stay in sleep mode ?", etc.). Both laptop and monitor have the same resolution so I keep using the external monitor, it's more comfortable.

I am considering an ultra wide monitor though but I have concerns around it being too wide and adding eye or neck fatigue long term.

Since Zoom became a thing, I can't imagine having to work with just a single smaller screen. I need to have enough real-estate to be able to multi-task someone sharing a desktop full-screen on Zoom legibly along with at least two of email, IM and IDE.

>> I no longer have to worry about "context switching" if I decide to un-dock my laptop and work somewhere mobile.

It does make sense to optimize for the lowest common denominator if working away from a desk often. However, that would also mean foregoing the external keyboard and mouse imo. TP keyboards are pretty good and the "nub" is better than a mouse in some ways (though seems to cause hurt finger after a while). I still prefer an external mechanical kb, mouse and big monitor but I get where the OP is coming from.

This is the intersection of masochism, minimalism, and technology asceticism.

Let's face it. If Linus Torvalds can work perfectly on a Macbook without external monitors, i don't see any reason why people claim that this must be a very unproductive way of working.

Eh. I use one of these: [0].

It’s attached to my 14-inch laptop, but I seldom take that out of its drawer.

It allows me to have multiple simulator screens open at once, and I also have an original iPhone SE, that I use for testing, but most of my on-device testing is done, using my iPhone 13 Mini, and my iPad Mini (I also have an iPad Pro 12.9-inch).

I find that gives me a good mix.

[0] https://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-49WL95C-W-ultrawide-monito...

I have been using a 15 inches laptop for coding for 4 years now and splitting the screen whether in vim or having two windows next to each other does not make for a great experience. Rather than buying a separate screen and having one more thing to manage I remapped Super + J and Super + K in Cinnamon to just switch windows instantly. Sometimes I even use Super + $number to get to a specific window. I think it works fine and it's more resilient: I can code when I don't have an extra screen

> while a large portion of my end-users would never benefit from those "pixel-perfect" designs.

Slightly off-topic but this is precisely why people need to stop saying pixel-perfect. It doesn't exist anymore than Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, or an honest politician.

At the extreme, two users with the same hardware have the resolution set differently, might use different browsers and/or have different zoom settings in the browser.

Saying pixel-perfect is at this point like saying, "fax it to me."

Eye motion has a cognitive cost. If I can take that eye motion and move it into my fingers' muscle memory to toggle screens, there is an increase in overall focus. I find an external or secondary monitor is good for large refactors across multiple repos, but that's a small slice of my typical book of work. Most of the time it's just distracting to have extra reasons to move my eyes and head. If I need a break, I go outside and look at far away things.

I do use the external and multi monitor setup. I tried for awhile having them side by side but it didn’t work having to look slightly left or right all the time. I’ve tried working from just the laptop and it’s fine for awhile but not long term.

Now, I have my laptop open on a stand with Keepass full screen on one side, all my communications (outlook, zoom, slack) on the right, and all my focus items in the center. We’ll see how long that lasts.

I can't agree more. Sure, there are legit uses for a huge screen (displaying several windows at the same time), but the developer need to focus, focus , focus.

I was surprised I could be productive coding on a 6.8" Android phone using vscode plus bt mouse and keyboard. Everything depends on viewing distance.

I only use one monitor, the laptop one. I tend to focus on a single monitor, despite trying to use more screen real estate, but forcing myself to use it has not been productive. The only case it is useful is with side-by-side windows. It hasn't been frequent enough, but now I am thinking that having one of those small side monitors for a laptop screen might be really useful in this case.

I'm old, my eye's are going. I did the laptop only thing like the OP for a while and it worked but I was craning my neck forward to see text. Increasing the size of stuff meant less screen so I just kept craning my neck until I hurt it.

Anyway, I solved the problem buy going to a single Dell 27inch QHD monitor that has a usbc hub in it. It is amazingly good.

Currently my personal PC is hooked up to four 1080p monitors, each 21.5" because that's all I could reasonably afford to put on my table (monitor costs, VESA mounts/stands for the weight, GPU that can serve that resolution well).

This setup works pretty well for most things I might want to do: it works well for recording or streaming because I can use one of them purely for the content that I want to show, while managing OBS/music/notes on other monitors.

It also works well for development, because I can look at code and a web browser, as well as have a Git client, terminal or something like docs open all at the same time and switch between those easily. I don't need to worry about overlapping windows or lots of windows on a single monitor, or many tiny tiled windows, or having to manage everything with multiple workspaces - everything is just there, side by side.

I can also vaguely organize things by importance, if I feel like it - my development stuff can be front and center (two widescreen monitors atop of one another), some utilities etc. on a vertical monitor to the side, whereas the less important things like e-mail or IM clients etc. to the side further.

I'm not saying that using just a laptop screen isn't workable, because it most certainly is, but for my personal approach more monitors is indeed better, at least up to a point. 3 or 4 monitors feels like the sweet spot so far (especially because it isn't too hard to get a GPU that supports them).

Pain point: if you ever use Windows and have any of your monitors turned vertically, you'll probably want something like FancyZones for the window snapping to work correctly: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/fancyzon... Also on widescreen displays it seems to me that vertical taskbars work a bit better, which can be problematic in certain OSes (like Windows 11), but isn't much of an issue in others (most Linux distros).

If VR resolution was better, it'd be nice to take this layout to the max: having windows in 3D space, using them as a monitor each. A bit like what Safespaces did: https://arcan-fe.com/2018/03/29/safespaces-an-open-source-vr...

> I found the amount of those stuck at 1366x768 to be quite shocking.

Hi, one of those here! Life is okay at lower resolution. But definitely not getting better because of ... designers.

Low resolution also means less computing and less energy, so lots of portable devices will have it for a long time.

Being an expert window switcher is very empowering to me, much more than lots of monitors.

I use keyboard maestro, several hotkeyed window layouts

The more you have customizable tools, the less is the need for larger or more monitors. I used to feel crippled if I don't have two large monitors, but after starting to use i3 and customizing it to my needs, I'm quiet comfortable with a single external monitor to do most work. It has been a great tool for improving my productivity.

You do you man, but I like my big monitor :)

I've been working (software) on only my mbp for the last few years and haven't seen any real impact to my productivity. You just get more efficient at navigating a small space. It's nice to not feel like I'm missing anything when working in coffee shops or on workcation trips.

Horrible way to work (if you spend 6+ hours writing code on that thing). Working on my 3 external monitors is a bliss.

i've personally stuck with using a 15" laptop screen thus far (and a smaller one at work during pandemic). this has been mostly out of necessity of moving around and the personal motto of not hoarding stuff when you would have to get rid of it in a few months.

while i'd love to give a secondary monitor a go, even when i'd use multiple monitors at work, it would not automatically become a huge productivity boost that most people swear by. one "big enough" screen has done just fine. even our brain zones out the visual feed outside of what's in front of you, so you are only saving tabbing shortcuts when working with more than one display. so much for those swearing by keyboard shortcuts and vim dotfiles.

My setup is to have a large 4k tv on the wall beyond my desk, hooked up to both a Mac Studio and Windows PC.

That clears my desk, removes my need for reading glasses, makes work legible from anywhere in the room, easy to demo stuff, ...

Having the screen on the wall also makes the room feel less cluttered.

I use virtual desktops. The only missing piece of the puzzle is the missing shortcuts to go directlly to a specific desktop, win + 3 for example. If Windows woild provide that, I coils also buy a bluetooth macro keyboard and use it just for that.

To everyone providing testimony such as "I don't use an external monitor and I'm fine" (or not), please mention whether you're using a laptop stand and/or separate keyboard/mouse.

> I mostly operate single applications within their own confined tag

For all this talk about getting a realistic user experience, what on earth are tags? I have absolutely no idea what that means in the context of window managers.

Designing for narrow screens is good. Things look better in an average screens, but also on a tablet and on a mobile landscape mode. Small width layouts are always a hassle / unusable.

I think even if I preferred a single screen I'd keep another one around so more easily screen share and be able to keep some things offscreen.

I used to have triple 4k monitors, but sold them after the layoffs and paid rent instead. So far I'm not missing them much.

I guess I'm bored enough to reply to this. Different people have different needs, end of story.

you obviously cannot use a 48 inch 4K monitor. but for me I think that 4K on large display offers so much space and confort. you end up use a smaller monitor to justify using a WM… why not, but dont donwvote me then

But why 1366x768 and not something with retina densities?