How do you manage multiple monitors with MacOS? I was doing this until recently and every single login involved rearranging my windows because MacOS moves them all to whatever display woke up first.

In my experience MacOS multi-monitor support is effectively non-existent.

Recently I picked up a 49” ultra-ultra wide monitor (basically 2x27” panels). It is one monitor but MacOS can’t drive it. They just don’t detect that resolution. I switched to a 43” 4k monitor (technically more pixels) and MacOS drives it fine.

My experience with MacOS is not “it just works” unless you are doing something Apple already predicted. That’s fine for me, I just wish they still sold a reasonable monitor themselves so I could be assured it would work properly.

How do you manage multiple monitors with MacOS? I was doing this until recently and every single login involved rearranging my windows because MacOS moves them all to whatever display woke up first.

I finally got sick of this and wrote a Hammerspoon script to deal with this. The config looks like this:

      local dualLayout = {
          {"Firefox",       nil,         primary,   topLeft,             nil, nil},
          {"Preview",       nil,         primary,   topLeft,             nil, nil},
          {"Sublime Text",  nil,         secondary, topHalf,             nil, nil},
          {"Slack",         nil,         secondary, topRight,            nil, nil},
          {"Notes",         nil,         secondary, topRight,            nil, nil},
          {"iTerm2",        nil,         secondary, topRight,            nil, nil},
          {"Safari",        nil,         secondary, topRight,            nil, nil},
          {"IntelliJ IDEA", "cursive",   primary,   hs.layout.maximized, nil, nil},
          {"IntelliJ IDEA", "community", secondary, hs.layout.maximized, nil, nil},
      }

Now when I connect my two external monitors, a quick Ctrl-Alt-Cmd-R lays everything out. It's crap that I have to, but it saved my sanity.

This is really cool, thanks.

I tend to have one space per task and have at least a Firefox and an iTerm on every one.

Just running a single monitor is the way to go for me. The benefits of multiple monitors just doesn't make up for all the fiddling.

> every single login involved rearranging my windows because MacOS moves them all to whatever display woke up first

Maybe we can get to the bottom of this. What is your use case?

I ask because as long as I plug them into the same ports it remembers how I arranged them previously (2018 macbook pro 15"). I haven't had to arrange them in over a year... even remembered when updating to latest operating system. Occasionally, I even plug in my LCD TV as a third external monitor and it remembers where that one should go in the arrangement too.

MacOS cannot drive one 5120x1440 display using Intel display hardware. It will happily drive two displays at 2560x1440. The monitor had multiple inputs so by putting it in PBP mode I was able to drive one input as USB-C and another as HDMI through a dock converter. This means the wakeup was not in sync. MacOS would see one monitor, arrange everything on that then realize there was a second one and fail to move anything back in this "new" arrangement.

The fact that it was all one physical monitor may have further confused the OS as a sibling comment mentions.

The solution was to sell the monitor to a Windows-using architect friend and buy a different panel with a resolution MacOS supports. She has a macbook too but it's the fancy one with discrete graphics which can drive 5120x1440.

The value proposition of MacOS to me is that I plug things in and they work. Any fiddling beyond that destroys the benefits of using this platform. I'm willing to iterate on hardware until I find something that works.

> MacOS cannot drive one 5120x1440 display using Intel display hardware.

For other readers, this is not technically correct. The 2020 13” MacBook Pro can drive the Pro Display XDR with its integrated Intel graphics.

I do not have a 2020 MacBook so I cannot test but the Pro Display XDR is not 5120x1440, it is 6016x3384. The problem with my current MacBooks ('14 15" RMBP and '17 13" MBP, both with Intel Iris graphics) is that while they can drive 4k displays they cannot drive the 5120x1440 resolution specifically.

This limitation is specific to the MacOS drivers. Windows in Bootcamp is able to drive 5120x1440 on these devices.

It's possible it is just MacOS doesn't have the EID information.

https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/221498 and https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/233854 has how to fix this. It doesn't sound much fun though.

Yeah I read through all those. It’s a work laptop so I’m not comfortable doing things like disabling SIP or mucking around in any system settings. That machine is my livelihood so I don’t mind finding devices that just work.

Mine too. That’s a completely different monitor and resolution. The problem is specifically with 5120x1440.

Ah ok, ya maybe it's related to it being the same monitor.

I have two different monitors that wake up at very different speeds and it's no problem here. My 15" 2013 and 2015 macbook pros had no problem with this either, and I've had 4 different monitors in the mix through those years too. I've transitioned to a CalDigit Thunderbolt 3 dock now and still no problem with it remembering.

So there's definitely something unique about that monitor. That is sad news for me too -- I'm hoping they make a 2x4K ultra wide monitor like that someday. Hopefully they've solved this problem by then.

So my 2018 MacBook Air can drive the Apple LG 5K display (lid closed) at 5120 x 2880 at 60Hz.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210205

I currently have the Apple LG 4K but plan to upgrade to the 5K.

I agree with you on the just works thing. I have the same keyboard, trackball, monitor, tbolt dock and external HD on my desk at home and work.

It helped me to check "Displays have separate spaces" in the Mission Control panel. MacOS seems to remember what went where with this checked.

That might work but it breaks my workflow in another way. Physically the display is a single panel. I organize workspaces by task so changing to a new one needs to change "both" panels because I'm actually using them as one.

>How do you manage multiple monitors with MacOS? I was doing this until recently and every single login involved rearranging my windows because MacOS moves them all to whatever display woke up first.

At least for apps that are dedicated to one screen + virtual desktop, right click its icon in the dock and assign it to that display and workspace.

Note that the effectiveness of window restoration also depends on the make/model of your monitors – many manufacturers incorrectly share EDID's across all units of the same model and sometimes across multiple models, making it much more difficult for operating systems to uniquely identify them.

Have you tried https://cordlessdog.com/stay/ ? Was working relatively well on my macbook before I switched to an iMac

That used to happen occasionally to me as well in earlier macOS versions. Didn't have to do any rearranging since Mojave, I think, definitely not on Catalina.

I use a single 34" 4K monitor with an arm mount on my Mac Mini. The power button on this monitor is one of those touch sensitive ones on the bottom right that I sometimes accidentally brush past. When I switch it back on, every single window gets reduced into an incoherent size and everything gets moved to the top left. It's really annoying.

I'm thinking of flipping my monitor upside down so I'll never accidentally brush that area while picking up something on the table.

That's likely a firmware bug in the monitor. It probably reports some ridiculously small resolution during its boot process and macOS queries it that time and rearranges the windows accordingly. macOS could implement workarounds of course, but probably it just follows the process whatever the display id protocol prescribes...

I was able to use a 5120x1440 resolution on my MacBook Pro using SwitchResX. No idea why Mac OS doesn’t let you select that resolution.

What kind of MacBook do you have exactly? Year, size, graphics hardware and OS.

Reports I read stated that while you can select it with SwitchResX it was scaled.

I never tried installing it myself because I’m not a fan of modifying the system on a Mac, especially one I don’t own.

From my poking around I think the horizontal resolution is the problem. The system scans possible resolutions to see what works. Apple just never expected a single display that wide.

There’s some reports that newer MacBooks with discrete graphics on Catalina can indeed run this resolution. It used to not work regardless of hardware, now apparently discrete graphics MacBooks can run it. Maybe because they updated the drivers/system for their new super fancy monitors.

You probably have to update the monitor info DB on MacOS. See https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/233854

Text looks similar to Windows and Linux (both of which definitely run at native resolution).

macOS Mojave 10.14.6

MacBook Pro 15” 2019

Radeon Pro 555X

Intel UHD 630

Right, you have discrete graphics. I do not which is why I am stuck with the MacOS driver bug for Intel display hardware.

I’ve seen zero reports of anyone successfully running 5120x1440 using Intel graphics.

To clarify: I mean I have no idea why Mac OS doesn't let ME select that resolution while SwitchResX does.

Go to the Displays panel, switch to the "default for display" option, then switch back to "scaled" while holding down the option key. Do you see that resolution in the list of options?

I’m not sure what SwitchResX actually does. None of the accounts I have seen online are thorough enough to draw any conclusion.

As far as I can tell it is the same as Option-clicking on scaled in the display preferences.

> scaling

I was plagued with performance problems, mostly in IntelliJ, until I realized it didn't work well with scaling. Going to native resolution solved it.

I’d say all is bad with MacOS and external monitors... It can’t manage text scaling like Windows, so you either have to downscale resolution and get everything blurry or keep the ridiculously high native resolution and have everything tiny :(

No, when it’s an external screen I don’t get any scaling options, only the choice of resolution. I have a 24” QHD, so either it’s ridiculously small 2500xSomething or it’s blurry HD :(

I have this problem as well. I actually run my 27-inch 4K screens downscaled on MacOS because the tiny font at native-4K gives me a headache.

The worst thing about it is that scaling seems to use more CPU than running natively and the OS has some noticeably additional latency when running scaled.

Odd, my main setup is an external 4k monitor and I only use it with the “large text” text scaling and I have no complaints, the text is clear and large and easy to read. Perhaps you’re also using your laptop screen as well?

No I close the laptop. Maybe it has to be a 4K monitor? Or an Apple monitor

Text honestly looks like shit an any non 4k external monitor for macOS it's kind of crazy how bad it is compared to windows.

Huh.

At work I have a mac mini and a Windows box, and I use three crapola Asus monitors between them, and my impression has been that macOS does a better job rendering text on said crapola monitors (the Windows box does a better job at compiling C++ in a timely fashion, though, so I mostly work on that one).

It's just a different stylistic choice. A lot of font nerds prefer the OSX choices because they try to stay true to the original font spacing without regard to the pixel grid.

Missing sub-pixel antialiasing is plain technical deficiency, not a stylistic choice. I agree arguments can be had about hinting and aligning the glyphs to the pixel grid, but not much beyond that.

It's still there, you just have to go turn it on.

But yes, I didn't know that they ripped out subpixel rendering in late 2018 by default.

Yeah they didn't completely remove it, but they did a good job of hiding it by not making it an option to turn on in the GUI. Have to use a terminal command to enable it: https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/337871

In general with a HiDPI screen I don't find any need for it. But on a low-res display like the typical 24" 1080P models it certainly helps.

Starting with Catalina, it does not fix the issue. I had to send back a Macbook Pro 16 2019 because of that and go back to Linux.

I've been looking for this for so long. Can't wait to try it out tomorrow