Multiple Displays on a Mac Sucks | Hacker News Reader

Multiple Displays on a Mac Sucks

wadetregaskis.com

273 pointsingve303 comments

> The Mac operating system still Just. Fucking. Sucks. at remembering where windows were, when relaunching apps.

I agree and it's confounding. For me it's even worse: when plugging back into my home office after some work on the road, it doesn't remember the window positions associated with that setup, and I have to reorganize my dozens of windows away from the laptop screen again.

I've solved this through a 3rd-party tool, DisplayMaid https://funk-isoft.com/display-maid.html (which I found from a prior HN discussion)

It's particularly frustrating since Apple's most popular Mac product is their Macbooks, which have a rich docking and display ecosystem, so you'd think dynamically changing the desktop configuration would be solidly handled! But no.

Three times I tried switching from Windows to Mac and each time I bounced because of how janky basic window ergonomics were. I shouldn't have to buy single-dollar-programs to fix core OS functionality.

I wrote a hammerspoon script that moves my windows and the dock when I plug in to monitors. That's free, I agree we shouldn't have to have such a complex solution though. But I would bet that if Apple did provide a built in solution it would break the more complex solutions.

You make it sound like they give a damn about breaking 3rd party solutions at the moment.

Huh. After years of mar I tried to go back to windows. I did it for 2 years but I'm so much happier on Mac again.

I did kind of like the windows thg of dragging a window to the top to maximise, but that stuff is easy to replace with an app or two. General OS slowness and instability and clunky design not so much.

> General OS slowness and instability and clunky design not so much.

I can't tell whether you're talking about Windows or Mac here

Windows are not bad if you have control over them. But in corp env, you don't and the force updates, AV, FW, extra AV scans and other monitoring shit so even with 32 GB of RAM, fast SSD and latest i7 PC would start to act like it's Win98. That's why I switch to Mac M2, zero corporate shit and total control so it works great.

About FW and AV scans, doesn't macOS phone home when you execute programs?

I remember some problem with programs hanging and/or slow to start because the phoning home functionality was having issues.

edit: yep, it does https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/391379/does-macos-...

It does phone home yes, but people pretend it doesn't and only Windows is evil when it does so. At least it doesn't have ads.

Not yet. But rest assured, they are just getting started. I know of one theory that suggests ATT was really just Apple preparing to launch its own Ads network.

https://www.wired.com/story/apple-is-an-ad-company-now/

> That's why I switch to Mac M2, zero corporate shit and total control so it works great.

Unless you work at an org that has all this stuff, like pretty much any org at scale that has compliance or security requirements. My work-issued MacBook has an AV that slows opening everything, forces updates and restarts and all that jazz.

Same. Our corporate-issue MBPs come with managed policies, AV software, and remote control services (remote wipe, lockout). It's why I'm never tempted to use work equipment for personal use.

I guess our org has chosen better management software, though, because it never results in restarts. The one exception is the requirement to keep the OS patched in order to log in to corporate systems.

The window position thing is really annoying though.

To be fair, that's only in part because Apple doesn't seem to have the level of device management Windows offers.

Many of the solutions I've seen in the corp environment try to make up for this with some frankly janky solutions. Apple seems to be slowly improving that, but give it time.

But at the end of the day, the crappy performance hits I've seen on both kinds kf devices are generally shitty monitoring solutions and restrictions that neither support natively.

This is where 'not corporate endorsed but tolerated' wsl2 is awesome, everything inside the vm is not scanned or slowed down by all the security crap.

My WindowServer is sitting at 30% CPU and 15% GPU on an M1 MacBook Pro and I have no idea why. I reboot the Mac more often than I rebooted my dogshit HP enterprise laptop.

MacOS is just a bad OS. It's good if you only ever use the MacBook as a laptop, but the moment you hook it up to a useful setup, it becomes a drag.

Did you ever consider there might be something wrong with your machine or some piece of software you’ve installed?

Or do you think the rest of the world that has heaped praise on the Apple Silicon Macs has missed something you’ve seen?

I blame this on trying to use non-Apple hardware with the MacBook. I'm sure if I had an Apple Display instead of a g-sync 165Hz-capable monitor and closed the lid when hooked up everything would be... perhaps not fine, but good enough.

The macbook is amazing when considered in isolation. Trying to use it in a workstation setting is definitely 'holding it wrong', which drives me nuts. Wasted potential and definitely undeserving of the 'Pro' moniker.

I use it in a workstation setting. Two workstation settings in fact.

I dock at home into a dual monitor setup.

I go to work and dock into a dual monitor setup.

I keep my MacBook open, not closed.

Pretty much all my coworkers do the same. All with Apple silicon MacBook pros. No idea what you’re talking about.

I believe you — I just think you need to do a deeper dive into your kit instead of assuming the rest of the world must be wrong about these machines.

Huge plus one. I too bounce between environments with my MacBook. Never experienced any of the issues the gp describes, which to me sounds like something wrong with that device. Is it a Corp managed device?

I have zero Apple displays out of the three or four I have in the office. They all work amazingly well -- often better than on Windows or Linux.

I have a LG 38WN95C (3480x1600, 144hz, thunderbolt 3) monitor that's plugged into my Macbook Pro (M1 Pro _I think_, I'm not home to doulble check). The laptop is in clamshell and plugged in via Thunderbolt 3. IIRC, I had to turn the refresh rate down to 120hz, but otherwise it works well. The only hiccup is that if I unplug it, use it for a bit, and plug it back in I have to open the lid one time after plugging it in so it can realize it's plugged in to a display.

I have a M3 Pro MacBook Pro for work that I also swap between on the display using the single cable that I remove from one to plug into the other. The laptop travels with me to work where it plugs into a 16:9 4k 60hz monitor while it's open. I have the same clamshell issue as my personal laptop where I have to open it once after plugging it in, but otherwise it works pretty well.

I do however have to do some workspace rearranging when I go from clamshell->ultrawide to my work setup of open lid->16:9 monitor. But that's no a huge deal since I'm going from 1 screen to 2 screens.

I'm using one in a workstation setting with 1 big curved widescreen monitor and a multitude of keyboards and pointer devices, and it's great. It's fine in the workstation setting, you're holding it particularly wrong somewayhow

It's a Mac. Of course there's something wrong with it. It's riddled with bugs Apple can't be bothered to fix.

If it isn't WindowServer losing its mind, it's some other buggy system daemon. Apple simply does not do stable versions of macOS any more.

Most of the Apple Silicon praise is coming from delusional fanboys. It's only good for one thing and it is power efficiency.

For the majority of people that are really into computers, that means jack shit and it is basically just some nice thing you may want to have if you really have to use a laptop from time to time.

Most Apple laptops (especially the expensive ones) are used by executives and somewhat rich people who want to show off. I was an Apple technician in the past so I know very well how marketing really doesn't match the typical user, then you get irrelevant "praise".

As someone who actually cared about Apple products, I wish they didn't switch their whole computer lineup to Apple Silicon. They could have kept making standard computers at the same time, but it would have been hard justifying such outrageous markup on ram and storage.

Are you running an external display and is it DisplayLink?

Yes, HDMI-USB-C dedicated cable directly into the laptop.

Are you using an actual USB-C to DisplayPort adapter or a software-enabled adapter? If you're driving more than one monitor, it might be the software-enabled type, which is NOT actually multiple monitors over DisplayPort but some other weirdness.

If you miss some specific Windows behaviour, I might have listed an app that implements it: https://taoofmac.com/space/apps/window_managers

(I switch between Windows and Mac throughout the day, so window tiling and Fancy Zones were things I missed)

Resizing a window in macOS feels so janky. The fancy gestures are all very smooth, but the basic stuff seems like it's forgotten.

My company has enforced frequent updates of browsers and other software set up, so we are relaunching apps very often, and this drives me crazy.

It feels like someone is walking over to your desk and moving everything around, just to annoy you.

Is it a Mac thing to keep applications open? I usually close mine as soon as I'm not actively using them

Not really, I would guess more of a personal workflow. I just have the same set of apps open the whole time, regardless of OS. Browser, test browser, code editor, terminal, chat, music player. That's enough windows to cause placement issues.

Yes I think it is, In Mac OS it has always been explicit that an application ≠ window (with only a few exceptions such as the calculator app). Closing an app window must not quit the application.

This is reinforced by the menu bar which is always at the top of the screen rather than attached to an application window.

Why is that? I'm a gnome/Linux user who had to switch to Mac M3 for work.

Macos feels.... Half baked. I don't understand why apps should run after I close the window.

I'm also annoyed that I can't type the window I want when viewing all windows. If I open mission control, it takes 3 clicks on the dock to run the app. (Un-do mission control, focus the dock, run the app.)

That being said, I do like stage manager, I try to size my windows 90% so I can see the background windows.

>Macos feels.... Half baked. I don't understand why apps should run after I close the window.

Because that's what Steve Jobs decided and he was never wrong. /s

The Apple philosophy always was "we know what's best for our users, it's our way or the highway, deal with it".

It’s an optimization from the early days where launching application was slow but task switching to an application in virtual memory was quick.

The benefits seem less obvious with modern hardware like SSD’s, but it is still a net benefit once you’re used to it.

The Mac could originally only run one major application at a time - although you did have 'desk accessories'. Andy Hertzfeld relatively soon wrote 'Switcher', a hack to allow multiple applications, which was released some time in early 1985. That wasn't virtual memory, it was real physical memory. The Mac wouldn't officially get virtual memory until System 7.

A more official solution wouldn't come until MultiFinder in 1987, and that was originally limited to one foreground and one background application. Wikipedia says:

"When an application is activated, all of its windows are brought forward as a single layer. This approach is necessary for backward compatibility with many of the windowing data structures that were already documented."

"With the release of System 7 [in 1991], the MultiFinder extension was integrated with the operating system, and it remains so in Mac OS 8 and Mac OS 9. However, the integration into the OS does nothing to fix MultiFinder's inherent idiosyncrasies and disadvantages."

By the time that OS X came out in 2001, the menu bar being at the top of the screen, and switching with the current app, was fully entrenched. After all, OS X initially had no native apps, still emulating the old OS 9 environment, and Carbon (essentially recompiling a "classic" Mac OS 9 app with relatively minor changes) would be the dominant API for some time too. Indeed Carbon wasn't removed until macOS 10.15 Catalina in late 2019.

An app is not a document in Mac OS (and other operating systems). Therefore it is logical that closing the document will not quit the application. Treating all applications as document is a flawed model which often breaks down as is made obvious when opening multiple documents in a MDI system.

It's even traceable all the way back to the user interface research at Xerox which Apple took and went with because it worked so well. Researchers such as Donald Norman also concluded that MDI interface were much worse at common actions such as drag-and-drop and standardised interface controls.

The macOS ideal (and arguably it’s somewhat correct) is that you shouldn’t have to think about it at all. You should be thinking about the documents/content of what you’re doing, not the internals of the OS.

The closest they’ve gotten is iOS itself where apps sleep forever without your interaction.

In the very early days of macOS before becoming a Unix it was actually noticeable because for ordinary people they apps they would use would always be around, and it was still faster to swap in running apps than load a closed app from disk.

If you want to type the window, something like alfred / raycast / spotlight search invoked by keyboard can help.

My gnome workflow was: * I have many windows open * I press a key (super) to get the misson-control like overview. I type in "Firefox" * It will run the app if it's not already running, or switch to it.

If there's something that can emulate that, and... Not be a hacky work around.. then I'm all ears

Cmd + spacebar opens the Spotlight Search

That’s how it works on macOS. Command-space (or whatever way you want to trigger Spotlight) then type Firefox and it will bring it to the front, or launch it if it’s not running. No workarounds or third-party software needed.

The menu bar is at the top because it’s always been there, but moreover it makes it easier to click menus as you only have to flick your cursor to Y=0 and then move it in the X dimension laterally instead of having to find a small target on a window in the middle of the screen. On other OSs it’s more common to maximize windows.

Distinguishing between processes (applications) and windows just makes sense.

For example say you download something in your browser, then you open a new window, then you close the original window. If windows = processes then closing the original window should cancel the download (because you killed that process), but we all know that would be nonsensical. So user intuition is that there is one main process and multiple windows.

Apple does allow for closing the window to kill the process. However only if there is one main window, such as the calculator app. If there’s multiple windows possible (such as in a text editor or web browser), then closing all windows does not quit the application because the user may want to close a window and then open a new window (e.g. open document or new document).

I think the rule was (and probably still is) that closing a window in a document-based application keeps the app open but closing a window in a utility application (where you usually would have only one window anyway) closes the application.

Why would it be "a Mac thing"? I only ever close FireFox when updating the system and I'm on Linux.

I think it's less of a Mac thing, and more of a RAM thing.

More ram than you anticipate is like extra lung capacity and working memory. Also an extra year or two out of the laptop. Combined with horsepower it can be an advantage.

Instant switching of apps or screens can have it's benefits, but needs to be managed.

Similar to having more tabs open than normal. Tools like Firefox Spaces are invaluable for switching between multiple client projects.

Waiting for apps to open/load/close can add up significantly throughout a day depending on the variety.

Back in the day, there was this idea of some applications being "document" centered while others revolved around an "activity". On average you only want one instance of your calculator application open as it's what you use to do math and having two or three might be confusing. On the other hand, when you use Microsoft Word there's really one window per a document and having five Word documents open at once make sense.

This is another idea that has been somewhat lost over time. I believe the way it works now is that you can choose to have your application close when it's last window is closed, or not. That seems a reasonable compromise, it's never been clear to me why you'd want an application like Word with no window to continue running.

yabai is the closest you can get to i3/sway like tiling window management on macOS, and its config allows fixing an app always to open in a certain workspace.

Tools like Yabai are interesting. I found I've wanted to learn more about people's setups in how they keep one screen config whether there's only the laptop display or 1, 2, or 3 external displays and it looks like Yabai and another one listed here is a step forward.

I use Linux and I ended up moving to i3 almost entirely because of the window and workspace management with multiple displays.

I used yabai for a while, but its general bugginess (losing windows, mishandling native tabs, SIP disable required for some functionality) eventually convinced me to try Aerospace. I have been very happy with how stable it is in comparison, though it's still not quite as nice as actual sway/i3.

Oh god, and needing to make sure that I disable workspace reordering based upon how it feels I should work is right up as a priority when I deal with a new Mac.

The most frustrating part for me is that the spatial metaphor [1] was at the core of the Mac’s identity from the beginning. I think this is a classic example of how a company’s philosophy — its very identity — can be lost if it’s not carefully preserved through turnover of team members.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2003/04/finder/

Another option that works for me: https://cordlessdog.com/stay/

Works fine for me. I sit down, plug my MBP 14" into the studio display, close the lid and carry on where I was. It does a reasonable job of window placement.

probably works when using a single screen. But on a multi screen setup, so having the macbook as 2nd screen, it's not working

> It's particularly frustrating since Apple's most popular Mac product is their Macbooks, which have a rich docking and display ecosystem, so you'd think dynamically changing the desktop configuration would be solidly handled! But no.

I hear what you’re saying, but the vast majority of MacBook pros are probably never plugged into an external display. I know on Hacker News it’s a very different story, but for the general population, they don’t use external displays.

In my case, I almost never use the MBP as a standalone.

My replacement for it will be a Studio, whenever the M4 version comes out. I'll keep my current laptop as an "on the road" computer.

Same here. I’d say my laptop is docked 99.99% of the time. I was just pointing out a possible reason as to why multi-monitor support is not a higher priority for Apple. It’s a subset (multi-monitor) of a subset (Mac) of their business.

I do wish it was better, but I’ve also found tools to work around all of my issues .

I just swipe with three fingers. I find that less annoying than dragging my mouse across displays and moving my head.

I've had the same problem on two MacBooks (one Intel, one M1), it restored the windows just fine when the (two) monitors were plugged black in until one day ... it stopped.

I would disagree about Apple having a "rich docking ecosystem".

Apple might be the only major manufacturer to not provide their own docking solution that work extremely well, beyond trying to do it with a display.

As soon as the "pro" moniker is used, 2, if not 3 monitors are completely normal. Extra wide monitors do not cut it. 3 24" 2k monitors at 2560x1440 can be far preferable to a single ultrawie that barely provides 2 monitors worth of pixels in the same space.

Lenovo, HP, Dell, Microsoft, all have it nailed. Used almost all of them before Apple.

It's also pretty bad if you have a personal computer and a work computer. It's mystifying that they sell $1000+ monitors with a single input. Like a terrible no name $100 POS these days will typically have two, if not 3 inputs.

Once upon a time you could daisy chain Displayport monitors.

The Matrox TripleHead2Go seems to remain relevant so many years after it's introduction, I used to run 3 monitors on my HP dock with one. Dynamite.

Nowadays, Pro at Apple mainly means "extra expensive", often doesn't have much to do with professional use even though sometimes it is actually at the intersection.

they used to have a bug a few years ago and some windows got to be placed outside the visible area when switching displays. there was no direct way to drag them back and restarting the app most of the time did nothing, as it reopened in the same place.

there was a button somewhere on the display settings that had the purpose of moving every app to the current active screen, that one saved the day.

yes, yes, yes. Losing window positions is my MAIN gripe! Thanks for the link you might have saved my sanity!

I've been running a Mac three display system for 5+ years now, maybe even longer. A 27" iMac with two 27" Thunderbolt displays on each side. It mostly works well... I haven't really seen (or been bothered by) most of the problems that OP complains about. The only thing is these thunderbolt displays are getting pretty old, and Apple isn't making any more similar displays in this category. I've already replaced the guts of both of them as parts have failed, and one of them has a persistent problem with the thunderbolt cable, to the point where I had to use a separate cable rather than the built-in one.

I admit I do get annoyed that even in a mostly unchanging environment (same monitors plugged into the same ports forever), macOS forgets where windows are supposed to go.

Another thing is the OS's handling of plug in events. When you have just one monitor on and plug in another one, the main monitor blanks briefly, then both monitors turn on and you're good to go. Not too bad. But when you have two monitors on, and you plug in a third, it first blanks the secondary monitor, that comes back on, then it blanks both the secondary and main monitor, then they both come back on, and then the new monitor turns on. Super irritating.

I haven't had any issues in Ventura with window positions when plugging and unplugging the external monitor with my MBP M2.

Wow DisplayMaid looks useful.

I managed to get my system "working" without knowing about it.

I have a macbook and an external display, and I utilize "desktops" heavily.

Basically desktop: 1 = gmail/calendar | 2 = slack, messenger, imessage, etc. | 3 = chrome | 4 = terminal | 5 = vscode

In the dock you can right click an app, and Options, Assign to Desktop N.

Luckily, when I plug my macbook into the dock with monitor, I actually want it to be a static desktop, showing just the website I'm working on. And I want the monitor to switch through desktops that have my applications.

This basically just works with one caveat. When switching from plugged in to unplugged, the macbook screen becomes desktop 1, and all the desktops shift over by one. So I just rearranged everything to be +1 (i.e. gmail/calendar are actually always desktop 2), and everything works seamlessly.

While MacOS does seem to rearrange windows occasionally for no clear reason, and there have been serious bugs in past releases, it does correctly restore my window positions across two 4k external displays when I connect them through a Thunderbolt 4 docking station.

Maybe some applications have custom window position management and fail at multiple displays? I haven't noticed any.

The only third party tool that I use to help with window management is BetterSnapTool. It restores some basic missing functionality that comes built in in Windows, most importantly the ability to maximize windows and snap them to the left and right half of the screen, plus a few other things.

FWIW I am by far at my most productive with a 43" 4K display in front of me with a sidecar 23" arranged vertically for long vertical documents. I do wish that 43" was an 8K to double the DPI though.

Yip. It always bugs me that so many fundamental things aren't implemented; no native calendar in the taskbar (well top/status bar) so I gotta use an app.

Finder fucking sucks, it doesn't remember which sort order I've set for which folder and I constantly have to change it between alphabetical and created date, mostly for the file open dialog (alphabet for vscode folder open, created date for slack or browser file upload).

For all of Apple's bluster they're really only as good as any other company when it comes to the "it just works" experience, often worse.

I think multiple display support has gone backwards on the Mac, in a way that’s representative of the platform and rather dispiriting.

I remember 20 years ago a colleague pointing out that Apple had put a lot of work in to allow windows to seamlessly cross different monitors, even if the PPI and colour depth were different. At some point between then and now, they ripped that out: windows are now only ever shown on one display.

I have similar feelings around other built-in features like Preview. I used to get the feeling that someone had really thought about these things, and then put in the effort to ensure 99% of use-cases were catered to. Now it seems that much of the time nobody has even bothered to ensure there are no regressions, and you’re lucky if even 80% of cases are supported.

> windows are now only ever shown on one display

Untrue :D

System Preferences > Desktop & Dock > Mission Control > Displays have separate Spaces > Off

So why is it not allowing windows to overlap two displays when that setting is on? Because when it's on a) you can swap spaces independently on each screen and b) you can move individual spaces across displays. If you had overlapping windows, swapping Spaces or rearranging them would produce really weird results.

I've just turned it off, and I still can't spread Safari over two displays. I'm on Sonoma, on an M3 Max, albeit using a third-party monitor.

Hi - toggling that setting requires a re-login to get Spaces to stop interfering with productive work. The windows still really want to jump to a specific display.

Oh: glad to hear that, if true. Thanks.

It is true. I’ve been doing multi monitor support on a M1/M3 pro for years now. Triple external monitors (2 off a dock and 1 displaylink). The older amd graphics cards took 10-15s to detect external monitors while the apple silicon chips take 1s.

I think a nontrivial part of the problem here is that if you sit down to write out all the requirements, there really isn't a great solution. If you need to A: be able to use multiple spaces conveniently B: be able to drop back to one space as needed (laptop usage scenarios) C: try to remember previous locations of windows and D: generally work like a standard desktop, you've already hit some fundamental issues. I think the people complaining are probably in a situation where they've always got their particular monitor setup, but the exact same code still has to be able to handle all the situations while maintaining the standard desktop layout metaphors... which the observant will note had decades of development before multiple monitors were a serious concern, so there is a lot of promises that were made before that was a thing that have to try to be maintained. Plus you have to remember the window manager must decide where all windows go right now; it has no idea that the second monitor was just a bit slow to come up and will be around in another 2 or 3 seconds, it has no idea that you're just unplugging it to check the connection, etc.

I think there just isn't a solution to this problem. You can move the mess from that part of the carpet to the other part, but someone's going to be annoyed, possibly everyone.

On a tiling window manager I fairly seamlessly can drop multiple monitors in or out, because the paradigm drops a lot of promises the standard desktop makes, so consequently it can more fluidly move into situations that don't make sense for the standard desktop paradigm. But that's not a practical solution for an OS to deploy in 2024.

I want to toggle this off, but if I do, making an app full-screen on one display makes the other displays turn black. This is too annoying for me.

This is related to the "full-screen apps pretend they are their own space" Mac OS behavior. I wish the toggle turned that off too.

Back in the 80's my late friend Hugh Daniel showed off that feature on his Mac by plugging as many monitors side by side into it as he could, then he ran a "ruler" desk accessory and stretched it out horizontally across all the monitors, to measure how wide the were all combined.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Daniel

He also brilliantly took an old monitor and removed the cathode ray tube, and then took a hires photograph of the inside of the monitor without the tube, and then used that as his screen background! Definitely the coolest most brutalistically realistic skeuomorphic screen background ever, with your windows floating in front of the high voltage electronics inside your monitor.

I don't know why Apple didn't make that the standard default screen background on their transparent iMacs.

"They're IN the COMPUTER???"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_o_O7v1ews

"There must be an ON button somewhere... Did you press the Apple thing?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToIyDSRSN5g

"Wait! Hansel! Let's not lose our cool. Then we're no better than the machine."

I need a 4k version of this now.

> I think multiple display support has gone backwards on the Mac, in a way that’s representative of the platform and rather dispiriting.

I think things have gotten worse as Apple silicon chips introduced limitations in how many displays can be plugged in, and MacOS has tried to have a better "maximized window" experience... Instead you get a new, unnecessary entire new windowing mode. You still need something like the awesome Magnet app have sane control of windows. And multidisplay is just a hot mess.

Meanwhile over on my LG Gram running KDE Plasma, things are getting better. I've got four screens all different resoulutions and sizes working just fine with different zoom levels. Wayland + Plasma seems to work really really well... which is shocking and amazing.

I still will never get over spaces going from vertical and horizontal to just horizontal, really shitty in comparison.

I don't think the issues of multi display really are only due the OS, my personal experience on multiple platform is that is suck regardless of whatever one thinks the solution would be. There are insolvable constraints implied by multi display:

- Screen going on and off is an asynchronous mechanism that the OS has to treat by an event driven implementation.

- All states must be valid (all graphical stuff must be put on display), as screen can go on and off at any time, for expected and unexpected events

- Those synchronous event must converge to an expected state for the user, whatever the final state is

- App developers mostly ignore those problems giving responsibility to the OS to deal with it. But sometimes they don't, sometimes ignoring the services provided by the OS to would help achieve predictable consensus, invalidating any assumption the OS could make.

- App windows positions state restoration have no definitive logic when there are moved and place across different dispositions, even it's manually by the other or programmatically by the OS.

I'm on Linux and I don't have any of these issues

Well I have them all the time

Did you try to solve them? "Linux" doesn't really mean anything, which DE/window manager? X11 or Wayland? Which graphics drivers?

Every configuration will have a slightly different solution, but at least there is usually a solution and it makes somewhat sense. And you can customize it to make sense for _you_, not what someone else decides makes sense. Back when I used to work in an office and used to dock/undock my laptop, i3 worked well.

I assigned workspaces 1-5 on my left monitor and 6-10 on my right monitor. When I disconnected from the dock, workspaces 1-10 would appear on my single laptop screen. When I connected it back to the dock, they switched back. I am _pretty_ sure it was all handled by i3 in the config.

I don't doubt you figured out a stable setup. My original comment was just to point out that I don't believe there is a definitive, all purpose, acceptable solution to the multi display problems.

The idea is not that specific combination are not solvable, but for each setup, you will have to solve issues manually or live with inconvenience due to the nature of the problem.

For our specific case, I didn't meant I was annoyed every day with my setup. I just meant I always had to fiddle a little to end up with a workable solution, each time I had more than one screen.

Debian-family?

Don't use outdated/old Linux Distros. I almost always find out someone is using a variant of Conical's Ubuntu CD marketing and it explains why they have some terrible experience.

Updated distros usually have everything working with modern hardware working together with software. Look into Fedora.

Ubuntu/Debian/Mint need to be avoided and we need to warn people.

Where "outdated" means like 1-2 years at maximum. The horror.

If you want to plug "new" at least go for silver blue or nix os, where it makes a difference.

1-2 years is SOOO long

That means no running NVIDIA GPUs for 1-2 years!

Or having broken software for 1-2 years!

Nope. You get the working software from 1-2 years ago. And you get "hardware enablement".

Tiling window manager with rules for window placements. It's not for non-devs, but for me it's perfect.

I’m surprised there isn’t much discussion on the amazing ecosystem of tiling window managers in this whole thread.

When I was still using macOS one to two years ago, I was using yabai [1] and it was perfect

[1] https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai

Idk about 'perfect', it's still painful and you wish you were using Linux, but it makes it just about workable.

I’m working with Linux mainly these days, and I think the “pain” for me usually is just getting the initial config right, and learning to live with the quirks on the specific platform.

Of course nothing is truly perfect, but I would say that after the initial learning curve, I had really pleasant and productive time with yabai.

Same. I started using ion3 in like 2002, switched to xmonad a couple years later, then sway for the last four years. Multi-monitor setups pretty much the whole time and it's been smooth.

I just recently had a really weird bug with Linux and external USB-C display. Basically after reboot with lid closed, system was gone into madness, like display flickers, laptop blinks with its led and eventually it just dies (probably kernel panic).

Turned out it's a dance between systemd putting system to sleep because external display is not connected and waking up because external display is connected. I might be wrong about it, but basically display takes some time to initialize and without input it'll turn off, so those events couldn't alight. What's worse it worked sometimes, so I spent some time distro-hopping, because I thought it's a bug in kernel or mesa.

In the end I just disabled sleep mode in systemd. I don't like this solution, but it's Linux, what could I say... At least I was able to disable it, LoL. Probably with Mac I would have to live with it.

This is the biggest pain as a Linux user, using Mac for work.

There's no fixing things. Lord Apple dictates you must use this broken thing, or pay for hacks on the app store

I don't think that the problems should be insurmountable, but I agree that the apple operating systems are not the only (or perhaps even worst) offenders.

What I consider to be absolutely basic - if I am sat at my desk plugged into two other screens and I have a particular screen set up, then I disconnect and go off to a meeting and come back 30 minutes later, I want my set up to return to it's original layout. Bonus points for making the setup while on the move also useable (perhaps converting screens into workspaces or something).

The only time Linux Fedora didn't work, was before I installed the Nvidia drivers.

I can't remember having any multi-display issues on Windows or Linux(after installing Nvidia).

Sound was always an issue for Windows.

After some frustration with shifted windows, usually even after a short break and monitor standby, I tried several solutions. Even tools that promised to save the fixed position were not satisfactory. My preferred go-to solution is now to define sets of window positions in a script for different work situations and simply call them up via keyboard shortcut. No third party tools needed, just works with AppleScript. The nice thing is, that it even works with multiple windows of the same app.

Here an example of my "Dev1" setting with three displays (two 27" external 4K displays and one 14" MacBook). Move Firefox to the first display and leave 50 pixel space for the left side dock. Move IntelliJ IDEA to the second and iTerm2 to the MacBook screen. Works reliable.

  use application "System Events"
  
  get (every window of process "firefox" whose value of attribute "AXMinimized" is false)
  repeat with W in the result
   set position of W to {50, 0}
   set size of W to {1870, 1080}
  end repeat

  get (every window of process "idea" whose value of attribute "AXMinimized" is false)
  repeat with W in the result
   set position of W to {1920, 0}
   set size of W to {1920, 1080}
  end repeat
  
  get (every window of process "iTerm2" whose value of attribute "AXMinimized" is false)
  repeat with W in the result
   set position of W to {1125, 1100}
   set size of W to {1510, 940}
  end repeat

MacOS not ready for the desktop: confirmed

(Yes it's just a satire of people who pick random UX failures like that to say Linux is unusable as a daily driver, as if MacOS and Windows were flawless)

I may lose karma for saying this, but the only way I've found to make multi-monitor work is to go to Energy Saver > Prevent automatic sleeping, and then I never turn my Mac Studio off.

Honestly, I've tried a bunch of things, including different monitor setups and apps that intend to put everything back in their place, but none of it was reliable, windows would still get shuffled around. My time is just worth more than the power consumption of an idling Mac. My monitors do get sleep, and even that sometimes rearranges the windows, but it works like 99% of the time. Why is this so hard to get right Apple?

I don't get why the screens sometimes swap around. It makes no sense to me that sometimes when I log in, my extra screens are switched and I have to move all the contents. The machine has the serial numbers of the screens, and it knows what ports they are connected to. Why can they not just use that information to remember where stuff is supposed to be?

The other thing that annoys me is that it changes the background when I've already chosen just to have black as my background on all screen. Works for a few days, then next time I log in, there's a photo instead. Why, Apple?

They also don't let you use the native resolution of the screens very easily. I had to install BetterDisplay to get this working, and even that isn't great.

There was an article here on hn like a week ago.

Apparently a lot of manufacturers ship monitors with identical serial numbers, so the os can’t identify them.

This is indeed the main problem. If you have two screens of the same model, the OS is unable to see which is which. This also goes for many USB devices (such as webcams that randomly swap).

Ok but then it could at least say "there is a screen plugged into port 1, and the same serial in port 2, so I'll draw the things that were on port 1 there again"?

That way it would be up to the user to plug the same screen into the same port, which I think I could handle.

Plus I can see the serials are actually different, so just going by serials should work.

Or it should just tell you "hey buddy, you've got two screens with the same serial and that's why I don't know what to do"

Agreed. In my case with a 15" MBP M1 Max and two LG UltraFine 5K's, which I always plug in the same ports, 99% of the time it remembers which display is which correctly. On my 2018 Intel, this was hit and miss. It's obviously not a trivial problem to solve...

>Ok but then it could at least say "there is a screen plugged into port 1, and the same serial in port 2, so I'll draw the things that were on port 1 there again"?

Yes, this is the strange thing. It's not like it's guessing which monitor is which, it's always swapped.

Well, BetterDisplay manages that just fine: https://cloud.paul.garden/s/eipiTJpKESPHZ6Q

Yeah, third party software will do that, Apple will probably just shrug and say, "it works with Apple displays".

Just like the touchpad and mouse 'scroll direction' setting being tied together. It makes sense for Apple mice/external trackpad (which all have a touch surface), so sod the 100% of other far more prevalent mice that use a scroll wheel, for which 'natural scroll' is absurdly unnatural (but disable it, and lose it on the built-in trackpad too).

> scroll wheel, for which 'natural scroll' is absurdly unnatural

IMO there is no objective reason why turning a plastic wheel towards or away from the screen should be the natural choice for scrolling down a webpage. It's just something that some people are used to.

My head sees scrolling on a touchpad, the Magic Mouse and a wheeled mouse as the same thing — and I even set my Windows gaming machine so that the mouse scrolls "naturally" like my Mac.

Fair enough, but it is a different interface to touch, and it even has a separate (duplicated) home in settings. There's no good reason for it to be the same toggle.

(To me, the scroll wheel is reflecting the scroll bar on-screen, so I'm pushing it up or pulling it down. A touch area more naturally resembles the rest of the page/window, so I'm on board with 'natural scroll' - I'm pushing the page up or pulling it down.)

>IMO there is no objective reason why turning a plastic wheel towards or away from the screen should be the natural choice for scrolling down a webpage. It's just something that some people are used to.

Hard disagree. I move the mousewheel down to go down the page, and up to go up. That's natural.

Swiping around my desktop screens and apps like it's a tablet makes no sense. It's the very first thing I turn off on all Macs.

When I’m reading a piece of paper lying on the table and I need to focus on something at the bottom, I physically push the paper away from me, I don’t scoot backwards with the chair. Not saying that your preferences are wrong, I just firmly believe that “going down the page” itself is something that only happens on a computer screen and has no natural physical equivalent where moving something towards your body would make sense.

You pull the mouse body towards you to move the cursor down the screen, you pull the wheel towards you to go down the page.

The idea that you are touching the document and directly manipulating it and pushing the document up is a touch interaction model. Mouse interaction moves the cursor/view. It’s not “natural” but it’s in accordance with decades of mouse behaviour that “toward your body” is down.

Speaking of, “page down” acts like moving the page up. Mouse wheel down (towards you) matches page down, which is agreeable.

UnnaturalScrollWheels is an actual name of an actual tool that I use to fix this particular idiocy.

In my case in does that with the (left) external monitor and the (right) MacBook one, while the central one (another external monitor) is fine...

> I don't get why the screens sometimes swap around.

Windows had this problem for AGES if you had 1 or more DisplayPort monitors connected, and I think it was in 2020 that they finally fixed it. I used to use this utility [0] to remember my layout, then when I learned that the problem was DP I started making sure I had enough HDMI/DVI ports on my graphics card(s) to avoid DP altogether.

Now I keep it running anyway because it's incredibly convenient in case I accidentally minimize all my windows and then reopen one or something.

Maybe something similar exists for Mac?

[0] https://github.com/lapo-luchini/WindowsLayoutSnapshot

Check this [1] HN post from 10 days ago, the first problem listed, "Dual monitors swapped positions" and the cause ("The problem comes from vendors who flash the same exact firmware with the same EDID to multiple monitors in the same batch.") :D

[1] Weird monitor bugs people sent me in the last 5 years (2022) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40038759

I have two monitors plugged into some generic docking station, and I keep the lid open below those.

Found this from a post here on HN a few weeks ago, but apparently manufacturers of monitors don't bother to give the monitors unique machine ids, except in batches. Since everyone's two monitors are almost always from the same batch, they can't be told apart on a hardware level. I thought I had struck paydirt in that HN post (a tool that helped with this), but since the two monitors of mine aren't plugged directly into the Mac, the tool can't fix it for me. It would have to somehow work on the level of the docking station. If I didn't have bad luck, wouldn't have any at all?

But it's so much worse than you describe. In theory, I should be able to hit F3, see the little "desktops" at the top, and drag the one from the left monitor over to the right, and then vice versa. But somehow, there's always one virtual desktop that can't be dragged in this manner, and it's always the one with the applications.

This person needs rectangle at least.

https://rectangleapp.com/

It will not solve all the problems, but at least it will allow for fast key-based window movement instead of slow drag-and dropping with the mouse.

Was going to say the same. Makes almost all window positioning stuff fun and good.

Agreed, I use bettertouchtools for the same purpose

Yeah this is essential. Personally I use:

- Ctrl + Opt + Cmd + Left/Right Arrow to snap window to left/right half of the screen

- Ctrl + Opt + Cmd + Up Arrow to resize window to fill the screen

- Ctrl + Opt + Cmd + C to move window between monitors (centered on the next monitor)

I don't need any other shortcuts, this is enough to be able to effectively work with two displays for me.

Mine (with Hammerspoon) are:

- Left half / right half - full vertical

- Move to monitor 1 or 2

- Bottom half / top half - full width

- Center 2/3 wide, full vertical (for the ultra-wide screen and reading)

Also have shortcuts for launching or switching to certain key applications (Firefox, IntelliJ, Terminal).

These + normal window switching keybinds are so integral to my workflow I definitely feel out of sorts if using a machine they aren't on.

I was going to say the same thing as well, I've used macOS for over a decade on-and-off with multiple monitors and Spectacle and now Rectangle are essential. I even use them when I'm just using my laptop screen.

Interesting, I don’t have any of these issue due to 2 pieces of software: displayplacer [0] and Phoenix [1]. Both free and open source.

displayplacer is a CLI tool that once you have your monitors configured how you want them, it can give you a command you can run in the future to reconfigure your monitors the same way again. I have 2 commands stored (that I activate via Alfred but I could have also set up aliases in zsh) for the 2 locations I work at. When I sit down I run the command and everything snaps into place. I could automate this to run automatically but I haven’t felt the need.

Phoenix is a tool that lets me write my own keyboard shortcuts for window management. I have 1 key combo that detects which location I’m at (by looking at monitor UUIDs) then positions all my windows how I like them. I also have shortcuts for resizing windows on a monitor or moving windows between monitors. You can accomplish something similar with Moom [2] (paid) and Rectangle [3] (free) or Magnet [4] (paid).

As for the dock issue, I use right-side dock with auto-hide and I don't find this bothersome at all. I use it plenty in addition to Alfred to launch apps. I have 3 monitors, 1 horizontal in the middle and 2 vertical on each side.

Lastly the Menu Bar, I have it only on my center display, always visible. Never felt like that was a problem or limiting to me.

[0] https://github.com/jakehilborn/displayplacer

[1] https://github.com/kasper/phoenix

[2] https://manytricks.com/moom/

[3] https://github.com/rxhanson/Rectangle

[4] https://magnet.crowdcafe.com

Phoenix is _amazing_. I used it for a good while until I realised I didn't need all the features, but it is still prominent in my https://taoofmac.com/space/apps/window_managers page.

The desktop-switching animation is too slow on new Macbook pros with "promotion" (high refresh rate) enabled. The animation speed is tied to the display refresh rate, so disabling promotion (setting refresh rate to 60hz) fixes the issue.

It's particular annoying because windows aren't interactable during the animation, so you have to wait for the ease-out to fully complete before you can click on things in the new desktop. This has been known to Apple for over a year.

I've had that complaints for four years when I had to use macos to develop for an iPad. As a Windows(or Plasma) user its window manager is just absurdly behind the times with its exclusive full screen and lack of snapping or having to edit application manifests so you can put the simulator in a tiled setup. It really didn't give me a good impression on why people like macos for development apart from having a shell with outdated utilities. It also doesn't respect the reduced motion accessibility preference to the same degree that windows does, it's how I get around annoyingly long animations on there.

To be fair, in the early days of Mac OS X the shell used to be much more up to date and hacking things around was much easier because they didn't yet put all those "security" features all other the place.

The folder layout of the system was also much cleaner and logical but now it feels like windows where data may be hidden in many layers of randomly named subfolders.

As for the hardware, the early intel MacBook Pros were extremely good for repairability and longevity. They lost some of it with the switch to "unibody" but it still was rather decent with most things accessible and replaceable (battery, ram, storage).

I think it is largely understated how much things went downhill after Tim Cook took over because people are blinded by financial success. Steve Jobs had learned some hard lessons before coming back to Apple and applied them with a lot of success, it seems all of this went out of the window and now it's all about making shiny hardware that has to be replaced on schedule preferably.

They say power corrupt but money has seems to have that characteristic, but then again, money is some form of power.

I’ve had none of the issues OP complains about.

Windows do open on the wrong screen, but I keep the same windows open for months at a time.

I don’t experience most of them either. Windows do get shuffled occasionally but it’s not that frequent. My setup is a Studio Display and now quite old Thunderbolt Display.

The Dock issue for example isn’t a problem for me because I have mouse sensitivity on high and take advantage of Fitts’ law. Tossing my cursor to the left with a certain velocity lands it on my left side dock on the secondary monitor reliably.

My use of the second display is primarily sets of “secondary” apps divided into desktops. This setup keeps everything sorted and makes manual management of windows mostly unnecessary… just switch to the desktop with the windows you’re looking for.

I could probably get used to a single large display or ultrawide, but I’d gravely miss that mix and match aspect of virtual desktops on multiple monitors. It’s so much nicer than futzing around with tiling, splits, etc.

Yes - I noticed that the OP mentions they reboot a lot. If you just reboot for OS updates, and use sleep the rest of the time, most (all?) of these problems go away.

Same for closing apps - with modern OS's keeping an app open is likely not an issue as it'll not consume resources when not in focus, unless it's running a heap of background tasks.

OP has PTSD from wintel computers i guess. People move to macs and don't expect sleep to work, expect to need a mouse for their laptops etc.

I could contradict the entire article with my personal experiences if I took the time. Been using multiple monitor Macs (and Linux before them) for ages.

> When the Dock is on the side, it only appears on the display that is farthest to that side. Having to move the mouse across multiple displays just to get to the Dock is untenably slow and awkward.

Who uses the dock? What's wrong with Cmd+Tab and starting applications from Cmd+space? The dock is where I look for that app I only use every 3 weeks but I still keep open...

> If – in a typical horizontal arrangement – you give the two displays equal priority in placement, you end up with one to your left and one to your right, with a very irritating gap between them in the one place it’s natural to look – straight ahead of you.

> Whatever it is, I just cannot get comfortable moving between displays frequently.

Look at those items. It never ever occured to me to place two monitors symmetrically with the space between them exactly in front of my eyes. You have a primary and a secondary, the primary is in front of you and the secondary is on a side, and not parallel to the primary so you keep the same distance.

I'd rephrase it as "dual monitors sucks for me, and I happen to be on a Mac so I blame the Mac".

I think the OP is the target audience for those ultrawides...

> Who uses the dock? What's wrong with

Right. Shame it can't be turned off then, nevermind just another user error right?

You missed the part where i said i can contradict everythin based on my personal experience, which is personal? :)

Btw, even if i rarely use it, i keep it on the bottom of my primary (the one in front of me) monitor. And not set to auto hide.

You're holding it wrong.

It effectively can be turned off with auto-hide, but yes, it would be nice to reclaim the system resources by quitting it like any other application.

> OP has PTSD from wintel computers i guess. People move to macs and don't expect sleep to work, expect to need a mouse for their laptops etc.

Say for yourself. My mac becomes unusuable after a week. I reboot at least every Monday, sometimes more. I used to do it more but looks like one of the updates fixed WiFi not being able to connect to anything and no amount of clicking or command line resetting would help.

Personal experiences. I'm on my 4th apple laptop since 2013, I never rebooted them except for OS updates and I never had any problems with wifi or lag.

Besides I started a windows development contract this month which immediately reminded me why i pay the apple tax...

Jokes on you, my old janky custom PC sleeps much better than my iMac ever did. I have a feeling that people who say that compare very expensive Macs to bottom of the barrel Windows machine where software/driver support is barely done, precisely because it costs so little it is expected that people buying them won't care.

For the most part it's true, people who can't be bothered to spend decent money on a computer don't care much about the finer things: the start it, do whatever task is needed and then shut it down; sometimes multiple days go by before the computer gets any use...

If you spend MacBook Pro money on a Windows laptop the experience will be mostly fine, even though it has its idiosyncrasies (just like macOS).

Yeah, I was a little bit baffled when I saw the post. I move between two different multi-screen setups with different arrangements (at home and at work), plus using my laptop alone. I haven't done like a study or whatever if it remembers my window positions, but I've never been annoyed with how macOS handles it, it's classic Apple "just works".

To be honest, with respect to just the headline, you could pretty much substitute Windows or Linux in the headline as well.

We can dump tech workers, en masse, to be replaced with futuristic Artificial Intelligence and advanced LLMs, but plug in 2 displays and your computer shits itself.

>but plug in 2 displays and your computer shits itself.

Didn't Kyle Machulis fix that problem?

2? 3 is more like it.

Yep. I don't have much experience doing it with my macbook but on Windows it's source of rage. 2 options:

- physically block the hot plug detect pin on all of your display cables. Now you can turn off your monitor!

- PersistentWindows (slow to put everything back, jumps around virtual desktops)

Bonus points for everything related to 'windows' and 'virtual desktops' being un-googleable terms.

This and picking the right audio-source consistently throughout the day.

I don’t understand why Apple doesn’t support daisy chaining multiple monitors using DisplayPort Multi-Stream Transport (MST). That would be an elegant solution that also would fit Apple’s style.

This person here seems to have gotten daisy chaining of two 4K monitors working just fine on a Macbook Pro with an M1 Pro chip: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/253341707?sortBy=best

They noted that their monitor came with cables that didn't support daisy chaining, when they upgraded their cables to ones that supported 40 Gbit/s then everything was fine.

Probably because their benchmark for displays (>220dpi, plus 10bit HDR in some cases) chews through so much bandwidth that it's not really feasible to squeeze two of them onto a single DP1.4 connection. DP2.1 could do it but Apple doesn't support that yet, and even if they did the monitors would also need DP2.1 passthrough, which also none of them do yet.

MST over DP1.4 only really makes sense for traditional low DPI displays.

I’ve got 2 4k UltraFine monitors and they chain with no issues.

I think OP means chaining via Display Port, that doesn’t seem to be supported on Mac. Seems it only supports chaining via Thunderbolt.

Most of the problems of the author would be solved by installing BetterDisplay: https://betterdisplay.pro/

My main issue with multiple displays on Mac is that the dock sometimes suddenly switches display. Sometimes this doesn't happen for weeks, other times it happens multiple times a day. When this happens, it tends to move the dock from the internal display to the external display, and the existing window on the external display suddenly gets smaller. The only resolution I've found when this occurs is unplugging and re-plugging the external display.

Not sure if it’s a bug with your specific setup, but scrolling vertically in a straight line from the centre of the screen all the way to the bottom will make the dock switch to that monitor.

Holy cow, that's so unintuitive.

Amongst the worst, most opaque UX gestures I’ve ever seen. Up there with press and hold the space button to scroll in text fields on iOS.

The dock moves whenever your cursor spends too much time hitting the bottom of the screen

OMG, next time it happens I will try if this is a way to get it to switch back (without unplugging and replugging /or rebooting or whatever I usually end up doing)

EDIT: it's not the Dock I meant but the Cmd+Tab app switching UI, don't know what it's called... but I guess maybe which display they appear on are somehow related

TIL

I can't emphasis enough how I hate that you can't have one dock per screen, aggravated by the fact that multiple windows of the same app (i.e browser) can't be degrouped.

You can resolve this by putting the cursor in the center of the display where you want the dock to appear then move the cursor to the bottom of the display at an average speed.

Works everytime for me but this is also the reason why the dock moves to the wrong display!

I'd love to use a Linux distribution and window manager on my MacBook, in particular KDE. Would be totally awesome, great hardware and a power-user friendly operating system. I resort to using a ThinkPad for my Linux needs and it's ok but the new Macs are just leagues ahead in terms of hardware.

You could give Asahi Linux a spin? https://asahilinux.org/

Yeah thanks, I know that, is it usable enough as a daily driver already?

Sorry I have no first-hand experience with it.

Considering this is an article about multiple displays - no.

There is a single dev (Sven Peter) working on Thunderbolt support which would enable external displays and he has limited dev time.

See the table of supported hardware. Software/firmware wise I think no reason to think it's unstable in mainline Linux. Just as long as they have actually implemented everything you need.

(Mine's an M3, so complete non-starter for now. Others have missing support for various things like HDMI or fingerprint reader, etc., so just a case of whether there's enough there for you to consider it 'usable' for your own use.)

If the Linux drivers now handle the Macbook touch pad with the same feel as MacOS, that would be extra nice.

How does this happen? You accidentally get sold a Mac when you are 19 years old and going to college?

Like, you can get better EVERYTHING outside their hardware. I can't imagine ever being like:

You know what I really want 0 GPU and only 64GB ram for $2700!

I understand if you need to compile for Apple users, but if you are going to install Linux on it, get a GPU or some seriously significant amount of RAM.

> you can get better EVERYTHING outside their hardware

I'm pretty sure my M1 MacBook Air was the most powerful fanless laptop on the market when I bought it, and there were just a few laptops with comparable battery life.

I'm also pretty sure it had a GPU. (still has one)

>M1 MacBook Air was the most powerful fanless laptop

Huh, my gaming laptop was the most powerful laptop with 3 USB-C ports and was the color blue. It also has an NVIDIA gpu.

Apple had 0 blue laptops with 3 USB-C ports or NVIDIA GPUS.

>I'm also pretty sure it had a GPU. (still has one)

OH man! Victim of Apple marketing right here. You have an integrated GPU in your CPU. This is industry standard for the last 25+ years.

> OH man! Victim of Apple marketing right here. You have an integrated GPU in your CPU.

Dude, I know what an integrated GPU is (and it's certainly not "GPU in your CPU").

You're not smarter than everyone else for having a laptop with a dedicated GPU and running Linux on it. You haven't found a magical loophole in the laptop market by not buying Apple. You're just prioritizing different stuff than Apple users.

>You're not smarter than everyone else for having a laptop with a dedicated GPU and running Linux on it.

Sure there are 7B people in the world!

But I'm def smarter than people who spend $2500 on a few GB ram and no GPU. Plato suggests its wrong for smart people to be humble, it allows dumb people to step up and make their points.

If you arent compiling for iOS, you made an inefficient decision. There is a reason Apple is found on low to middle income consumer households, and not found in B2B. Guess which is most susceptible to emotional marketing.

> I'm def smarter than people who spend $2500 on a few GB ram and no GPU

Tell that to Linus Torvalds, seen using a few different MacBooks over the years. So far, you've made the impression of an arrogant nobody who doesn't know what a GPU is.

> Apple is found on low to middle income consumer households

Citation needed.

To be fair my personal anecdotal experience seems to match that sentiment (as an Apple technician).

It doesn't mean that rich people do also have Apple stuff (especially the iPhone) but at least for computers many of the rich people I know went with a Windows computer and stuck with it (because it made more financial sense).

The cliché is a struggling artist with a nice Apple laptop and it's not without any merit. There was a time where indeed an Apple computer offered you some stuff that wasn't available elsewhere or at least in a significantly worse way (desktop print, illustration, audio type of stuff). But then in the 2000s it leveled off. To the point Adobe made some marketing stating that an equivalently priced PC was faster to run their software. It wasn't that successful because at this point Macs were already iconic status symbol but still.

Nowadays I see a lot of creators just switching to Windows PC for convenience and power. I follow some YouTube channels where the person got his start on a Mac but then switched to PC because Premiere Pro is good enough and it is rather useful to have access to all the 3D software with a powerful GPU for rendering.

While Apple was busy creating their island walled garden software support has become way too atrocious because developers got tired both of their business practice and ever-changing APIs/framework that makes it not worthwhile to support a large software for the small userbase.

People can't shut up about Apple Silicon but outside of efficiency it is just about competitive and not so much in other ways (max power, GPU).

We will see how the ARM rollout pans out in the Windows world (I don't have much faith; the importance of efficiency is largely overstated and is a use case already met with Chromebooks for the most part) and if it works out it might be better for cross-compilation for macOS but then again Apple Silicon is not exactly standard ARM and it leaves the biggest problem of an exotic GPU with specific way of handling things.

I fear Apple may have put themselves into a corner just like in the PPC days by trying to be too different and "special" for short term gains.

College students often prioritize battery life because they are away from chargers for so many hours of the day. And you absolutely have to admit the M1 Macs really just destroy Windows and Linux in terms of battery life.

Regardless, there are very practical reasons to have different priorities than yours.

College kids need to be on their laptops all day?

Nah that is post purchase rationalization.

No offense, but I'm trying to help you understand and you're not even making an attempt.

And yes. The answer is YES. Yes, college kids need to be on their laptop all freaking day.

Can you think of a reason why?

I work with desktop software and have to work with multiple display scenarios. It's on Windows, but I guess the problems are similar. Fundamentally, one issue is that the concepts of multiple screens, multiple desktops, multiple DPI's are usually quite young.

Also, there is (at least in Windows) no well defined concept of "desktop configurations". There is no built in support for remembering which screen a particular window was last started on, or last shut down on etc. You have to write all this from scratch. Log a screen index/name/size/whatever, per window, on shutdown. If your app is one that typically spreads out over multiple screens, it's even worse.

For a user that some times works on a laptop, and some times plugs in a second display as their primary screen, then the odds of that being recognized as "Oh now they're using that config where they are more likely to want to use the large screen for our program rather than launching on the screen the last ran on" is basically nil. Does that happen in any software? Is it even a remote expectation of any user? It would be a pleasant surprise for sure, but I'm also sure half the time the guess would be wrong, leading to even more frustration than a simpler system with fewer guesses like "launch on the screen last used regardless of the current configuration".

If you minimize and then restore a window, it saves that position on the screen. There are some programs that will misbehave no matter what but after that, you can close and reopen the program and it should open in the same screen, with the same size and position.

> If you minimize and then restore a window, it saves that position on the screen. There are some programs that will misbehave no matter what but after that, you can close and reopen the program and it should open in the same screen, with the same size and position.

Is this a mac-ism? A standard behavior? An expectation? Something a program would do automatically?

As for the behavior I agree - so long as the screen index exists and so on. But should a program remember more than that. Like "Last time there were two screens, we were moved to screen B and exited there, so we should now start there" even though it has been run on a single screenA since. That's the typical office user with laptop + external screen.

It is standard behavior on Windows. The issues you run into come with plugging and unplugging screens. If you leave them plugged in they work like that. I know it's not helpful for laptops that get moved around.

I wrote an quick little app some 12 years ago. It remembers screen location for various windows. I added a sanity check for windows appearing completely off-screen. Apparently Windows uses negative coordinates for screens to the left of the main screen. So one limitation of the app is that it won't remember window positions when they are on the screen to the left. I should get around to fixing that eventually.

> Side Docks aren’t practical. When the Dock is on the side, it only appears on the display that is farthest to that side.

I experience this pain daily. The frustration is compounded by the fact that Apple did something in an OS update 3(?) major versions ago that causes the built in MacBook Pro display to freeze when connected to an external display. I move the mouse to the built in display, it freezes, I wait up to 5s and then I can use the dock!

I've used 4 different MBPs during the last 3 major versions and have never had this issue.

I seriously have none of these problems which makes me wonder what‘s wrong with me / my perception. (Intel and Apple Silicon MBPs, two external Dell Displays.)

As a Mac user of decades I rarely use the dock though, but mostly shortcuts and spotlight.

The issues depend a lot on the displays (some displays don't expose a serial number, or have the same serial for each display), or how it's connected - Thunderbolt dock? USB dock? HDMI? (what adapter?) DisplayPort? (again, what adapter?)

That’s a good point, it may help me if begin to experience similar problems. (Which may be tomorrow, because I mentioned that I don’t remember having those problems.) I’m currently using a thunderbolt adaptor with HDMI and DP, so I guess that makes it pretty easy for the OS to consistently identify the displays.

When I first got an iPhone I was sooo excited to give Apple all my personal information. That is weird, because, that is a negative as a consumer.

When I first got Fedora, I was pretty accepting of flaws in the system because I was so excited. Weird because, this is a negative.

But vocally, we love our brands we associate ourselves with. You are such a vocal proponent of Apple products, when Apple fails, you think it reflects on you and your decisions. You don't want to be a dolt that spent $3000 on a computer that can't do what Fedora can do better for free.

We give the companies we irrationally love, passes.

I currently don’t use Fedora but Arch and FreeBSD besides from a number of Apple and Android devices, does that mean - in your simple world view - that I’m not in love with a single company but polyarmorous? I have some professional experience with Solaris, HP-UX and Domain/OS, which of them is the kinkiest? I bet it was Domain/OS, but nobody does it anymore, it’s way too weird and smells funny. Necrophilia it would be, I guess. (And I’m not even sure about the MacOSX Developer Preview CD that I found in some box the other day, using Apple must be some resurrection fetish…)

Pseudo psychological analytics of OS choices, coming from people who have neither an idea on other people’s use cases nor on their experiences are so disappointing and boring. Can we please invent a “-splaining” term for it?

I haven't used Macs much, but I've also had issues with multi-monitor window placement on Windows and Linux too. I use a Windows laptop at work with a single external display. For some reason, if I unplug the display to go to a meeting, when I reconnect it all my windows are still on the laptop screen, and new windows even open on the laptop screen despite the external being primary. I've resorted to just disabling the laptop screen unless I need it to screen share in a meeting.

At home I use Linux Mint and also went back to one monitor. It seems like the entire desktop is just spanned across both displays, so Windows seemed to always open on the left-most monitor. Maybe it's better now, it's been a while since I tried it. But I'm also visually impaired and use the screen magnifier, which is awful on multiple monitors. If you set the mouse to always be in the center, it centers it across all monitors, not your primary monitor so your cursor is between the two monitors. On Windows, the magnifier app centers the cursor on whatever monitor it's currently on, which I think is much more intuitive. I've noticed this same behavior across multiple DEs (Cinnamon/Gnome & KDE) so I suspect it's a deeper issue. I've thought about making some code contributions to improve the usability but I just haven't spent the time to get a dev environment set up.

Not remembering window placement is why I’ve been exploring switching back to Linux. But on Linux, I’m kinda shocked at the lack of per-monitor workspaces / virtual desktops and the lack of good gestures. I feel like for my workflow, workspace management > window placement because that forgetting only happens once per day. Any Linux DE suggestions that have the same type of multi-monitor workspace support and good gestures?

I can't stand multiple displays, mac or not, they just distract me. I want one big display, something like 27" or 32". To each their own.

> I can't stand multiple displays, mac or not, they just distract me. I want one big display, something like 27" or 32". To each their own.

Me too. The extra wide ones are nice. I've got one gigantic 32" curved monitor, and use it with multiple workspaces.

Same. I've tried multiple monitor setups a few times, but I always ended up actually using just the main one with the other ones displaying Spotify or email inbox all day.

I don't need that, it's more comfortable to bring Spotify to the front on the main screen than turn my head anyway.

I however feel limited using anything less than a 5k screen.

27” is still a bit too small for my taste and bigger screens usually don’t gove above 4k. The best I could find at the moment is a 34” 5k2k ultrawide. Unfortunately a lot of those are curved, which I hate. I would love something like a 36” 16:9 monitor with 8k resolution.

I was on a 32in 5k ultrawide.. trying out a 42 4k oled just now. My eyes are thanking me for the bigger screen realestate, but I did get used to the wideness of the UltraWide. Definitely better to go massive single in my view.

That OLED video look though, just can't be beaten..

I’ve been running a Phillips 49” ultrawide for nearly 2 years now and it is simply the best thing I’ve ever used. The USB-C / display port KVM built in works a treat and makes swapping from my laptop to my desktop a single plug, and the monitor itself mostly behaves itself with every device I’ve tried it with including an iPad.

I wish it was higher resolution but I suspect going beyond its 5120x1440 current resolution is pushing the limits of most display connections and standards at this point.

Overall though, I love it. Do recommend.

Same here. I've gotten used to just having my laptop screen (14" mbp m1). It's fine. Having more screens is just confusing/distracting to me. The only time I use external screens is when presenting and I just put them in mirror mode.

Mostly using windows side by side is not a thing for me either. I look at one application at the time and I just give it the full screen. The sole exception to this seems to be finder windows for me.

There are lots of sub optimal things in the mac os UI. The key issue is feature interaction between features introduced over the years combined with obviously slipping standards on QA and UX. Steve Jobs would not have accepted a lot of the crap that slips through these days at Apple.

A good example is the the full screen mode in combination with the notch. You can't actually use the space next to the notch for anything else than the menu bar. Which just means full screen is a glorified "hide the menu bar thing". You don't actually gain any vertical space back if you use it with a lot of apps.

With the recent release, Mac OS defaults to having a transparent menu bar meaning that in dark mode and with the default background the menu bar is very bright. To fix this lovely bit of feature interaction, you just have to use a dark desktop image and turn off dynamic desktop backgrounds constantly changing the color. The sensible default of just making the menu bar background black isn't there because they want the dynamic desktop thing to always be visible unless you are full screen, which is not the same as having you window maximized. But obviously the maximize window button now makes your window full screen.

And speaking of desktop backgrounds. I don't care about them because there usually is something on top of my desktop. The only visible bit would be below the menu bar. The only time you see the damn background is when you are deliberately hiding all your applications. Why would you do that?

And of course full screen pretends that you have extra screens. So it's a hybrid that is like maximizing a window and plugging in a screen. So in terms of window management things get weird. Especially when you actually plugin an actual screen.

This stuff started escalating when they introduced full screen mode (aka. let's pretend hiding the menu is special), which is when they broke their dominant UX of always having the menubar visible and taking up space. Which now that we have the notch is the only use for that screen real estate.

Can we just loose the notch and get our screen real estate back? I just want to maximize windows and alt+tab between them. I mostly want the menubar unless I'm watching a video.

Apple itself is hopelessly confused on this topic. I recently experienced Apple TV on mac os. What were they smoking that it got released in that shape? It always plays the video in full screen but it keeps the main application window open separately. When you alt+tab away, you end back on the wrong thing. And sometimes when you hit escape it closes the full screen video but it keeps on playing. It's bizarrely buggy and dysfunctional. Complete amateur hour.

>The sensible default of just making the menu bar background black isn't there...

This may not apply to you since you mention using dark mode, but for those who use light mode, there is a hidden system preference you can use to force only the menu bar and dock to being dark. Easiest way to set this is with TinkerTool.

> I want one big display, something like 27" or 32"

27" is big? I'm really curious what sort of setups people are running that they feel this way. I ran a 40" 4K monitor for years, and I'd really like the option to go to 5K 40" or even higher.

He actually touches on the ergonomics issue in the article. And I don't think this is a Mac or Windows issue.

Windows 11 does actually help this quite a bit by putting the Start Button in the middle of the screen.

Additionally using PowerToys FancyZones might actually make it usable.

I thought Mac had it better than Linux. But after reading this...

Anyway, I'm hopeful the situation for Linux will improve over the coming years with Wayland more-and-more becoming the default (so more people use it, and more will put effort to make it better) AND being a better foundation for building multi-monitor goodness on top (Xorg was getting old).

Would Windows do a better job at this than Mac? (havent used Windows in decades)

I have nearly zero problems with multi monitor setups under Wayland. I did experiment my monitors rearranging themselves once, and there was an interesting glitch regarding maximizing windows in displays that aren't horizontally aligned (that is now fixed), but beyond that I cannot recall any issues ever with Wayland multi display.

which DE?

my issues were on KDE. i had also that the windows on a just unplugged monitor are not moved to a still active monitor. this used to work on Wayland.

> Would Windows do a better job at this than Mac? (havent used Windows in decades)

I mean Windows doesn't have many of the issues that the article mentions, but Windows fails at being a Mac.

I dislike the limitation on how many external displays you can have with a Mac, though by and large I've had very few problems with it. I can't really identify with any of the problems the author mentions, personally. The only problem that happens semi-frequently is that windows on external displays will swap displays when I resume from sleep.

The sad thing about not remembering windows is that if you use spaces, you also never quite know where things will launch again on restart. I'm not even sure there's a definite pattern. Mail mostly goes into the right place, but sometimes don't.

Closest thing I noticed is that apps that have a "splash screen" of some sort (could be an update check, etc) will always fail to go where they are supposed to. This includes Discord and Xcode very reliably. Sometimes point releases make things worse.

Also, I think there's quite probably some firmware/hardware issues with screen detection on the M1. I do have a USB-C Studio Display which works mostly fine, but I also have a (I admit very odd and not quite new) Asus 4K display that uses Multistream Displayport. Connected via a USB-C to DP cable (protocol wise, it's supposed to be the best case scenario as VESA joined up to USB-C).

On my M1 Mac Studio (and something I can't reproduce with other hardware), that display will regularly not wake up from sleep and plugging/unplugging to another port will work maybe half the time.

Most puzzling also, if my Mac goes to sleep, periodically the Asus display will wake up for a few seconds (just going back to standby with backlight on), then go back to sleep. I never timed it but it's at least once an hour, and always does so.

I also had a few bug reports of people having issues with various USB-C docks where my screen saver (Aerial) just gets told the screen isn't there anymore and to go away, and people then see a blank screen on that one, and it never comes up again with the screen not on standby, but just displaying black with background on.

Considering it's been happening since I got the M1 and not on previous Macs (and most reports were on M1 I believe), I have a feeling there may be a few firmware/hardware USB-C issues laying around. Maybe it's been fixed since ?

Thank you for Aerial! It’s wonderful. I haven’t had any issues with it on an M1 mini with 2-4 displays, one always in portrait orientation. (I use DisplayLink USB adapters for the extra ones)

I don’t have app/window placement restoration issues on my main High Sierra machine. When I got the M1 and was forced to use Big Sur and up I started using BetterTouchTool to save and restore window layouts, so I haven’t thought much about window placement since then.

Again, love Aerial and its fantastic customization options. Thank you for all your work on it.

I'd been using 2 external displays with my macbook pro for the past few years. The most annoying thing for me was waking the mac from sleep and getting it to detect the two of them. Once they were both detected I honestly thought the experience was OK. But the dance I needed to do every time to detect was so frustrating that I recently replaced the two of them DELL's new 40 inch 5K ultra wide: https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/dell-ultrasharp-40-curved-wu.... I'm very happy with it. For my (slightly aging) eyes the pixel density is great, there's lots of space, and the waking from sleep detection issue is finally gone.

No issues here (14" M1 MBP + Studio Display). A lot of the weird issues with multi-displays went away on the Intel to ARM transition. The author is using an old Intel iMac Pro.

There are of course window logistics problems but they seem to be manageable and Apple do the least surprising thing I find.

I would suggest the author tries using a windows laptop with 1920x1200 at 125% scaling and an external 4k display at 150% scaling and the associated weirdness. They will come crawling back to the mac in tears of joy very quickly. Literally at the moment all my icons have gone back to 100% scaling and are tiny. The entire rest of the display is scaled fine, apart from one app which is 100% as well. This is every fucking day on windows. Edit: also spending 20 minutes replugging the damn monitor because it doesn't detect it the first time either (Dell P2723QE)

The display issues are somewhat forgivable from my side but I can’t wrap my mind around the worse alt-tab experience compared to Windows. All windows are separate in Windows, but if you alt-tab to Chrome on a multi-display Mac, it will not jump to the last Chrome window, but pull up ALL Chrome windows.

There is at least some rationale to this madness - Mac also has a cycle-windows-within-app shortcut (CMD-`) which is frustratingly missing on windows

I have the same problem and solved it by installing https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app/

Macs have numerous weird issues that seem to be beyond Apple to fix. My pet hate is that there's no easy way to just create a new file in Finder. On any sane operating system you'd just right-click and select "create new text file", etc and it'd create one. Macs give you nothing.

And that's before we get into WTF is going on when you hold shift and the cursor keys in a text editor. Sometimes it selects forwards like you want, but sometimes it inexplicably starts to select baskwards, selecting words and the entire paragraphs.

It's like certain key parts were written by someone having a bad day who just thought "this'll piss them off".

Text input on Apple devices as a whole seems to have been programmed by extraterrestrials that use completely alien sentence structures.

Specifically, the iOS keyboard borders on unusable most days. But when I have to use a Mac, it's a pain too.

If you don’t want to use a finder replacement app which would add the extra right click functionality like creating a text file, there are finder extensions/plugins.

There’s one called FinderUtilities[1] which does specifically what you want.

There’s also more featureful extensions like Power Menu[2] as well.

1. https://github.com/suolapeikko/FinderUtilities

2. https://fiplab.com/apps/power-menu-for-mac

I've used multiple displays back when monitors were still pretty small in size but i can't find a good reason anymore to use more than one for a developer in the age of 27"/5K. It's more distracting than productive.

And I find multiple monitors are extremely useful. Especially if your monitor is only 27’’.

I'm very happy with my built in monitor on my 16" Macbook Pro. Brightness, HDR, local dimming, retina and 120 Hz. I have yet to find an external monitor with all those specs.

I don't know where the issue is but I've been having tons of problems with Adobe stuff only when my MBP is connected to an external monitor.

It's like the canvas in Illustrator stops rendering frames randomly. Sometimes I do something like writing text or dragging an object and it takes a second or two for the change to render.

It's been almost a year now and most issues are still there.

https://community.adobe.com/t5/illustrator-discussions/multi...

Yes Apple has problems, but don't forget that performance / efficiency sucks when you have an accelerated compositor spanning across graphics cards. On top of that, most Macs don't have two graphics cards (or even slots to put them in), so you're really spanning across generic USB-C attached HDMI adapters that could be sharing the same bandwidth depending on where you plug them in. In a time when Apple wants to be 120hz HDR retina, that doesn't sound like a high priority for them.

That said I sometimes run side by side monitors, and I too would appreciate the pony.

I just got 2 new monitors in work, one has a built in usb-c hub, and that monitor can use display port out to drive a 2nd monitor.... It can, the MacBook hardware can, but MacOS cannot. I was thrilled to no longer need multiple dongles to drive my 2 displays in a clean way, but ended up having to get an external thunderbolt hub, which can drive 2 monitors, but only if one is driven from thunderbolt and the other from display port. It's pretty shocking that this is al standard stuff, but MacOS limits what you can do.

The XDR is easily one of the best monitors on the market for coding if you value high resolution. I've never had issues with bloom on it either, seems more relevant for stress tests than daily usage.

XDR url?

https://www.apple.com/pro-display-xdr/

Thanks!

It's just a shame it costs as much as the whole rest of my setup put together...

I don't have a solution for the windows/dock/menubar not behaving correctly (which is why I've only been using my MacBook 14inch screen after my monitor died a year ago).

But my Lunar app (https://lunar.fyi/) does have some solutions for the other problems:

    I have an iMac Pro. Even if I were willing to waste the built-in display, I cannot – Apple does not allow iMacs to disable their internal displays.

Lunar can use a hidden macOS API to really disable the internal screen on Apple Silicon: https://lunar.fyi/pro#blackout It basically removes the screen from the Displays system settings and from the screen arrangement completely, and turns off its backlight.

On Intel it can simulate that by mirroring the screen and turning it black which does the job for most people.

    It’s very distracting having a bright display right next to one on which you’re trying to play a game.

Again, Blackout can help here with a handy action called "Make other screens black (keep this one visible)" which can be activated by Option-Shift-Click on the power button or with the finger-wrangling hotkey Ctrl-Opt-Cmd-Shift-6 (it can be re-assigned, I ran out of non-conflicting hotkeys)

---

In the past, I spent a huge amount of time trying to fix the window problems using yabai rules (automating where windows should appear) and hotkeys for moving between displays. But it became a burden whenever I wanted to stray away from my pre-defined rules or when the cursor moved between displays erratically.

Nowadays I have:

• a single 14inch very bright and vivid display with a single Space/desktop

• all my apps covering the whole screen

• switching between apps with rcmd (https://lowtechguys.com/rcmd)

• ..and sometimes moving windows in a left/right pair with Swish (https://highlyopinionated.co/swish/)

Does anyone else have a problem where secondary displays on mac just stop working, and the only way to fix it is to unplug and replug the display cable, or cycle inputs on the monitor? Nothing I've done seems to fix it. I don't know if its because its a 144hz monitor or what, but it never happened on my previous 60hz monitors and it never happens when i plug into my windows box.

Plenty, but fortunately the fix is just an unplug+replug. In the past, the secondary display kept working but a sneaky kernel task took over 200% CPU, and you had to 1) realize the computer is feeling even more sluggish than normal 2) know what the heck kernel task is 3) know that un/re-plugging will fix the CPU load

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kppD1PotFw

We have one particular model (P2419HC) of Dell display at work that seem to do this.

As best as I can tell, there's some kind of active component in the USB-C cable that is only powered by the monitor, and it doesn't "reset" itself properly.

I thought I was alone! Cycling inputs doesn't even work for me, I must unplug the monitor physically. Not even BetterDisplay can fix it.

My three pain points with an M1 MBP and multiple displays are

- in some tools (like Emacs) the background can be mixed with blurred, outdated text from iTerm windows - after updates I must fiddle in the settings so that the windows are correctly focused when switching tabs - occasional "disconnected" screen that flickers black and might require to login again

This seems to indicate that most devs at Apple are using a single, large display rather than multi setup. Otherwise, the devs themselves would have been frustrated into fixing it. I tried it for awhile but I just prefer a single myself. Command/Tab to switch around is just great and I don't have to turn my head hundreds of times a day.

I can relate to that. I tried a 4K dual monitor side-by-side setup some time ago (on a Windows PC), but my initial excitement at the available screen real estate was soon replaced by fatigue from eye and neck strain. Turning my head several times a day and forcing my eyes to refocus on a new target left me sore after a day's work.

Command/Tab is now my preferred way too. I've also come to really like Stage Manager on Mac and I don't feel like I need another screen anymore.

100% agree. It absolutely sucks. It sometimes amazes me across all ability apple has that the experience is so atricously obnoxious to try to use more than one monitor with macos. All the points in the article are true and it's a frustrating experience anytime i try it.

Not to mention that macos renders fonts like crap on external displays.

For me it's okay. I've noticed only a glitch with menu bar apps (tray icons?) that sometimes I hit them on one monitor and menu appears on another, but it's been recently introduced and I hope will be fixed.

Best thing there is on Mac is one app per desktop mode (maximise gives new desktop to the app) and a gesture to switch them

This is weird. I used external monitors at the office back in 2017-19 and I thought it was magical how the windows resized/positioned themselves when I plugged in the monitors.

I didn't use external monitors at home though (just laptop screen) - maybe that confuses things, if you have two separate external display setups?

I felt the same way back in 2017.

I don't have the same strong opinions of many on this board about having problems now, but it does kind of seem like I have more problems now than I did back then.

I use an external monitor at home, a portable one when traveling, and external monitors at the office.

I have seen things that were pretty annoying, like all my windows getting stuck on the laptop display, even with the external monitor connected. Having to move 15 instances of VS Code to the external monitor is really obnoxious. It happens to me about once every 6-8 weeks. Not quite annoying enough for me to go find and learn some window management application.

Not sure exactly what triggers this. It seems like it's related to powering up and connecting the external displays. Or even the temporary loss of connection (bad USB cable) between them seems like it can make it happen.

I think back in 2017, I was only using external displays at work. So the laptop didn't have 4 different configurations to contend with like it does now (no external display, home external display, travel external display, and work external displays)

Doesn't even mention that MacOS will silently downgrade you from 60hz to 30hz, and then when you notice you'll need to unplug and replug everything, change HDMI cables, try a different adaptor, etc etc and then once you finally figure it out and fix it, it will happen again a few days later.

I've only experienced this with low quality or frayed HDMI cables. When I've hit this and swapped the cables its always stopped happening.

I agree with the author that having a display to the side means it’s not very useful for anything but documentation, but that still is a big use-case for me as a developer. Especially when you put the side display in portrait mode it’s absolutely perfect for viewing API docs or PDF files.

I have a display just outside my usual field of vision that I use for team chat. It's great. The stuff is really visible if I want to see it, but only if I want to.

All I want is to be able to put the dock on the right side of my middle screen but that remains impossible.

Every time people bring up how superior Macs are (and their hardware is great) I bring up the fact that being forced to use MacOS is a negative. It's sufficient, but not great. Both Windows and Linux are equally good, just with warts in different places.

MacBooks are at least ok+ for every conceivable regular office worker (including programmers) use case. Windows and Linux have their respective strengths, but their main issue is being almost completely unusable in certain use cases.

Now that Windows Explorer is tabbed, I find it impossible to use anything that requires me to manage multiple windows to simply move a file to another folder.

MacOS is perpetually losing the physical position of my displays. 95% of the time I plug my laptop in the display layout swaps them. I would understand if it was 50% of the time, although I'd still be frustrated, but the fact it happens reliably is beyond me.

The software is fine, I don’t understand the complaints. The fact that some M-series Macs have a hardware limitation that prevents you from using multiple displays is ludicrous and embarrassing. I begrudgingly had to change my setup around this

I can recommend Moom as a window manager for multiple displays. https://manytricks.com/moom

Especially, if your setup changes often, you can have various presets to make life easier

If it makes you guys feel any better, Apple is the best OS at remembering window positions.

Some people say, "Give the customers what they want." But that's not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do.

So obviously you want the functionality MacOS provides, you just don't know it yet

Just use Magnet, or Amethyst if you like tiling windows manager (it works really nicely with multi-display, sending windows with a hotkey instantly). There are many other alternatives too.

It's not perfect but not particularly different to Windows.

I don’t have any of these issues. In fact, I have really never had problems with a second monitor on a Macbook since 2012 through multiple generations of Macbook, different monitors, and every mac OS till now (Sonoma).

I have this issue for years now so that I am not noticing anymore. Even I started to pickup the absurd algorithm and can guess what will happen to my Desktops configuration when I plug that pro-brick to my external screens.

Changing between set ups, also hurts. Itshould be built in that it knows I've been here before and rearrange to match this rig, not the one with the stifle giant monitor, and nit the times I'm just on the mac

To be fair, microsoft only first figured that out on Windows 11, too. On Win 10 and before, windows also used to be all over the place when plugging in or removing an external display...

I'm fascinated by the responses to posts critical of Apple and macOS in particular:

- Works well for me!

- Windows is just as bad

- I tried Linux, and something else was bad

- Just get this app (only $29!) that attempts to fix this issue (but uses undocumented OS APIs and will break in the next OS update)

- Don't do what you're doing (just use one screen, use mouse gestures instead keyboard shortcuts, buy AirPods instead of your BT headset, ...)

- It used to work better. Thats why I refuse to upgrade from Ventura (Catalina, Tiger, ...)

- Yeah, it's terrible, but what can you do? This is what the planet's best minds came up with, after all.

- It's not bad, it's actually good! The fact that you point out these so called "flaws" says more about your rigid mind and lack of taste than it does about macOS and I am, quite frankly, embarrassed on your behalf. You must embrace the Apple philosophy or buy a PC.

I genuinely haven’t experienced any of this frustration. My windows usually remember where they were when I plug into my dock with two 4K monitors.

I've had to make a bunch of Hammerspoon hacks for myself to make macOS remember where windows should be.

In my experience macOS doesn't even remember where spaces should be.

Partly related, I have issues with HDMI audio constantly breaking on a MacBook Air. I found multiple references to this issues around the web, but no solution.

I have an issue where the display audio will just stop working randomly too, and the only way to fix it seems to be to unplug the display and then plug it back in.

Is that what you're describing too? I always assumed it was an issue with my adapter setup, since I use an old Apple thunderbolt display that I got free from a previous employer.

macOS has an accessibility feature which lets you set a second display to be a continuous zoomed-in presentation of the first display. It’s pretty good in use. But EVERY TIME you unplug the second display, macOS forgets that you wanted that set-up. It’s configured three or four layers deep in System Settings, so it’s fiddly to reach (more-so if your vision isn5 great and you’re squinting to find the controls in the first place). I’ve given up using the feature because the interruption to workflow is so infuriating.

Even worse once you combine retina (builtin) and nonretina (external) screens. You can tell this is not a scenario Apple would be testing much.

Apple does not sell nonretina external screens. So you can assume it's not tested at all.

In my own case, I use a 49-inch LG ultrawide (5120 X 1440).

I vastly prefer that, to multiple displays.

Has me spoiled rotten. Even though I have an MBP, I hate undocking it.

> There aren’t any great options for larger displays.

Can't you use any large display you'd use for Windows or Linux with Mac these days?

I use 3 monitors on my Mac Studio with no issues.

Which 3?

1 Benq 4K and 2 Dells 1080p

Anyone else’s M1 1st gen still crashes when streaming audio/video through hdmi?

ya it's been mentioned but I just go through a "window ritual" with Rectangle every time I open up. I've never thought it was a big deal... until now. dang you all. now I want instant window placement every time.

This post prompted me to fix a problem I’ve had for literal years. Forgive the tangent, but I’m so happy that I needed to share. I imagine I’m not the only one who’s run into this particular issue, so hopefully it’s helpful for others too.

If you’d prefer, feel free to skip over the story to the links at the bottom.

I use a single large(ish) monitor and multiple virtual desktops, or “spaces” as macOS calls them. I have Chrome windows on all of my desktops. When I quit Chrome with ⌘Q and then relaunch it, it collects all of my Chrome windows onto one desktop instead of restoring them to the desktops that they were on previously.

For something like 14 years(!), this has driven me up a wall.

Notably, it doesn’t happen when Chrome relaunches to update itself or when I reboot my machine. In those cases, the app happily restores all my windows to their respective desktops. It’s almost as if it’s taunting me: “oh sure, I can do what you want, I just choose not to sometimes.”

Every once in a while, I go down a rabbit hole, trying to find a solution. I always come up empty-handed. Usually I just find a small handful of other people complaining the same issue. It was never a particularly easy thing to google, and it didn’t help that that it wasn’t clear who was even at fault. Was it a Chrome thing? A macOS thing? Maybe some combination of both? Or even worse, maybe it was a “wontfix, works as intended” situation?

Over the years, I’ve learned to cope. I rarely quit Chrome anyway, aside from updates and reboots, so the itch wasn’t that strong. Or maybe the itch just became part of me. Who knows.

But today, reading this post about things that suck in macOS, I thought of my own thing that sucks in macOS. Like remembering an old friend. An old friend who drove you crazy but who, nonetheless, you cared about.

And today, for old times’ sake if nothing else, I once again googled some combination of the words “Chrome”, “restore”, “windows”, “multiple”, and “spaces”. And folks, this time, I found it.

There’s a setting called NSWindowRestoresWorkspaceAtLaunch. (How had I never found this before? It’s so simple!) You can change the setting for any app, not just Chrome.

https://superuser.com/a/1490087/77154

In case the Stack Exchange network finally succumbs to whims of private equity or otherwise gets lost to sands of time (it’s a fear I have), here’s a gist with the same instructions:

https://gist.github.com/f-steff/0163e0c1ed174e8ab7b33101ab47...

I can also put to rest my internal “feature vs bug” debate. Here’s Apple’s response to a bug report from the Chrome team (presumably from before they added the NSWindowRestoresWorkspaceAtLaunch setting):

This issue behaves as intended based on the following: Application restart does not preserve space assignment. We are now closing this bug report.

https://issues.chromium.org/issues/40531488#comment57

I've experienced many of these things on a regular basis, on my work supplied MB Pro (M1 and Intel)

* multiscreen: I use my macbook, a widescreen, and a 24" in portrait mode. Window management /sucks/ on mac. It either doesn't remember where apps go (even just between sleep), it loses track of them, and the fact that you can just partly drag a window onto a separate screen can cause it to "vanish" until you finally figure out it's that tiny edge

* full screen - you fullscreen one app, and macos decides that the other two monitors should go black. eh, no?

* MST. Please. For fcks sake.

Plugging in two distinct monitors at the same time made my Intel macs (plural) freak out. Screen 1 would activate, screen two, one would go off, two would blink, etc.

* I don't want the dock to move all around. So I disabled that. But then, the menubar is also stuck on just the main screen.... WHY!?

* non-existant window-management. Rectangle solves a lot, but really?

I've got more gripes with this thing... probably mostly to do because I want to use accessories which aren't blessed by Apple. Like my Poly Voyager 2 headset. Every time I switch that thing on or off, apple music starts up. Why? Because Apple. Nowhere to switch that off, so I'm using the NoTunez app to immediately kill Apple Music again if it starts.

The constant mixed use of home-end-pageup-pagedown (most apps it acts properly - you know, like every other os handles it, and some apple specific apps suddenly end is "end of document" instead of the end of the line.

The list goes on. I guess if you're deeply embedded in the apple ecosystem with their gear, it works, but once you go outside of that, it's .. shite.

And he didn't even get into how mac docking stations fucking suck and full of graphics bugs (everybody in my company actually turned off chrome GPU accel. because the display sometimes went crazy while rendering.)

from the same company that markets their high resolution displays not in pixel area but simply with the word 'Retina'? you don't say...

My way of making it all nice and not a hard chore: use a tiling window manager - I used to use Amethyst but screen sharing makes it go wild in some cases, so now I use yabai; I never quit any app so if I close something I'm rebooting in which case what can you expect?; as many apps as possible need to be full screen so I'm actually using many virtual desktops, more than multiple displays; keyboard shortcuts in my memory to navigate to where I want to go and to throw app windows from one display to another, move focus and so on; dock always at the bottom with autohide for reasons pointed out by OP.

But by far the most important thing I remember to do is to organise and move things based on the work I'm doing at that moment.

I normally have three displays: MBP to side (right side, so I can use the trackpad near my keyboard if I want, although I also have an external trackpad in home office), and 2 x large monitors, one directly in front, one to the left angled in slightly.

Focus app - web browsing (like right now), email, doc writing, coding, whatever - that's coming onto the large central display.

Left display is stuff I want to keep near but might be a distraction. Documentation, slack, email if I'm meant to be focusing on other things.

MBP is basically a video conferencing display (camera is right above the screen, feels natural), perhaps a terminal for command line stuff, and so on.

I'm rearranging desktops and moving them around at the start of each focused block of work (which is typically every hour or so), and there are some "standard" layouts I use when doing meetings/calls.

When my MBP is out on the road with me, one virtual desktop for web, one for email, one for calendar, one for slack, one for code editor, and so on...

TLDR: I made some tooling choices, and am prepared to spend a couple of minutes to move things around and make sure you're setup for focusing on a task I'm about to dive into. The key thing is I'm feeling comfortable for the task, not comfortable for all tasks and everything is always in the same state.

Apple is way too busy "motivating" you to buy their next subscription and their next hardware to get working on these bugs and make quality-of-life improvements.

The external display limitations of Apple silicon Macs are inscrutable and infuriating.

I have an M3 Pro from work. At the office, I plug it into an HP dock with a single USB-C cable (which I believe is TB4). I have 3 displays connected to the dock and they all work.

I purchased the exact same dock for my home, but only 2 of my displays work there.

I think the M3 Pro is documented to support 2 displays; you have to get the Ultra to have 3 (absurd). The dock is able to do some kind of workaround with the displays at the office, but I can’t figure out what the displays at home are lacking for that to work.

It’s 2024! For gods sake I should be able to have a dozen displays if I want.

My Mac is limited to just one external display yet everything works just fine through a DisplayLink dongle.

I use multiple external displays (some at the office and some at home) with an Arm Mac and, frankly, it mostly works without thinking about it. Sometimes things change their shape because of the different resolution, but it basically works. Just my $.02

Rectangle at least makes window layout easy. Another thing that sucks on Mac is the position of notifications always obscuring other stuff. FFS why can't I put them in the bottom right or something?

I used linux mint in a work environment for years with no problems. Multiple monitors, audio sources, peripherals everywhere, no problems.

These macs, man. They drive me insane. I'm just tired. I've written so many times about them, I'm just tired. They're outright hostile. I do a cargo cult rain dance daily because of some new and interesting problem, or an old problem whose true solution is always seemingly just out of reach.

I have a hard time accepting some of the points in this article.

I have a 5K, 34" ultra-wide LG (https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2021/08/21/1600) and a somewhat-4K-like tall 28" LG (https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2023/05/31/0845) in front of me most of the day, alternating with a 15" Surface HIDPI plus a 14" 4K external monitor for calls on my standing desk.

On the Mac, apps open on the same displays and locations most of the time. Granted that Stage Manager is a cluster...flow of confusion, but I actually appreciate the way I can get sets of windows "back" in the same positions when I switch tasks.

Full screen games work the same way on both platforms (three if you count my Ideapad Flex, which runs Fedora and is occasionally plugged into one of those monitors)

Side docks are... well, an affectation, really, but let's call it _deeply ingrained personal choice_. As a former NeXT user and long-term WindowMaker refugee, I liked them until I realised that hiding the dock and having it back on-demand did wonders for my sanity (esp. regarding notifications). So now the docks stay off-screen, at the bottom (like GNOME).

The menu bar... Is the last bastion of nice, usable UX in a world of Electron. So I like having it everywhere (although it is always dimmed in inactive displays screen), because Fitts' Law ensures I have something I can hit with my mouse in a hurry.

Having windows on the "wrong" display is... highly dependent on the type of window and where your focus is, but largely consistent (system alerts always show up in the right display, etc.)

The ergonomics of multiple displays are a highly personal thing, but in my "left-tall, centre-wide" setup (where bezels are all <1cm) turning my head to look at my tall display (where I keep reference materials) also makes it pretty natural to look out a window and rest my eyesight.

The right-hand side of my desk is where I keep the "distracting" stuff like my phone, mug, pencils, electronics parts, etc., and that's comfortable for me. But it's not a Mac-specific issue.

So yeah, there are a lot of first-world considerations in this piece, but I wouldn't consider it representative of any real issues.

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