Ask HN: How on earth are you using your Apple computer with external displays?
I have spent countless dollars on cables and adapters in an attempt to find the magic combination. I have read DisplayPort specs, I know every brand of certified cable. I now know way more than I would ever care to know about DisplayPort and HDMI protocols. I have tried 4 different brands and models of monitor. For one of those models, I had three of the exact same model. All combinations work flawlessly with anything that is not one of the Apple devices. I have all but eliminated any of these components being the problem.
Depending on the device and the day I will get:
- Visual artifacts like snow, lines, flickering
- Failure to support native resolution on any high resolution monitors
- Failure to support high refresh rates
- Forced scaling, detecting monitor as a TV and using interlacing
- Most reliably of all, failure to wake from sleep without plugging/unplugging; doing a dance with power cycling my monitor or device until it finally works, or just giving up and logging into my Windows PC because today I can't use my Apple computer
It's never all at once, but it's always at least one thing. In the time of owning any of these devices, I have without exaggeration, not once had the expected experience of sitting down at my desk and starting my day without fighting my computer to work properly with my monitor.
Searching the internet, I can't be alone. All of the problems I have, as far as I can tell, other people experience. And as far as I can tell, no one has an answer. I'm at a breaking point after ordering this $4k desktop Mac Studio and waiting 3 months for it to arrive. I hoped that, being a device that requires an external display, they at least worked it out with this one.
They did not.
So how does the entire professional industry working with Apple computers manage to start their day, every day, like this? Am I insane? Is no one else dealing with this? Are you all just using the built in display? This has been going on for YEARS for me, across multiple generations of devices.
110 comments
[ 0.27 ms ] story [ 83.9 ms ] threadI've always blamed that on the adapters and cable connectors and, of course, Apple's bullshit proprietary connectors. It's really only been slightly annoying though.
But I only paid about $550 for my Mac Mini. I'd be very pissed if that was the case with a brand new 4k Mac Studio rig.
Dual external monitors are a different beast. Here I get random issues depending on the external monitors ranging from:
- random reorganisation of my apps
- different resolutions not working well
- one monitor constantly flickering (this may be due to the use of a docking station)
Waking up from sleep works 99% of the time with a single press on the keyboard.
A bigger issue for me is theac not actually going to sleep when I turn off the screen.
So, not sure about your specific problems. Macs can be fiddly, but they tend to work for my professional use case (programming).
The issue seems also software related because if you would try the same screen or dongle with another MacBook it works fine, but it keeps failing on the malfunctioning MacBook. It is infuriating because the interface provides zero feedback.
The most annoying bug for me is when you "unplug in the wrong order" and the MacBook screen does not wake up when not plugged to an external monitor. You have to go back to your monitor and replug it and then "unplug in the correct order".
I use 2 external displays, a 27" Dell and a 24" Dell. Works very reliably. Dock settings, window locations, everything is solid.
Most of the cheaper docks AND adapters are utter crap, though. That makes the entire ecosystem hard to negotiate, for a lot of users. It's unclear to me how Apple can help with that, though.
Apple laptops do have some problems waking up properly with external monitors. It’s not the cable or the monitor but the computer not handling the situation properly.
The only laptops that do are ones with docking ports.
I rarely use the internal display.
I make sure to use good quality cables and displays (Dell 4K and Acer 2K at 144 hz, currently).
2 different MacBooks (an intel pro and m1 pro). Each connected to an Anker dock. The docks are connected via HDMI to an HDMI/USB KVM switch from CKL, then I have a 20ft HDMI cable and USB cable to run across the room to my desk.
The only time I hit issues is if I reboot the laptops while disconnected from the docks. They won’t pick up the monitor unless they’re logged in when I connect them.
Otherwise, I toggle back and forth between them with the KVM remote with no issues.
That said, the “remote” is pretty simple. It uses what looks like a mini-A to mini-A USB cable, but they use the connector as a 6th pin. I needed the remote to be further away, so I cut the stock cable and used 6 wires of an Ethernet cable to add an extra 15ft.
I'm simply reaolved to the fact that MacOS is terrible with multiple monitors, it's simply not designed to work like that.
It did seem to get a little better the last year though. Still not anywhere close to the ppug and play experience of windows.
At work we also got a batch of LG 27" Class 4K UHD IPS LED Monitors (27UK850-W). Again, just work.
The main thing to note here is I picked these monitors because it only requires a single USB-C connection for display and power.
Dunno how much they messed up with the M1/2 yet because I don't dare upgrade. Waiting for more kinks to be ironed out software compatibility wise.
I haven't made the jump to 4K where the problems seem to be though. Still hoping for the ressurection of 16:10 displays :)
I've also tried the Mini's HDMI port with all kinds of very weird screens and capture cards, including an old WaveShare 7" 1024x600 that doesn't even send an EDID - that kinda worked too.
[1]: https://www.lg.com/us/monitors/lg-43UD79-B-4k-uhd-led-monito... [2]: https://www.caldigit.com/ts3-plus/
https://medium.com/@parttimeben/mac-it-just-works-horribly-c...
Unfortunately, as the article says, these issues go way back... Weird that Apple has just neglected them for decades.
The solution is (unfortunately) to spend money on the lg ultrafine 5k or studio display. These have a higher PPI compared to every other monitor on the market. I run my lg ultrafine at native scaling. No more headaches and my productivity using macos 10x'd.
2012 Mac mini to HDMI to Epson projector.
With the Samsung, a restart requires me to reset the underscan. Interestingly, the slider is in the correct spot when I open monitor settings, but I have to drag it a tiny bit to get it to kick in.
Every once in a while it will be a little flickery, or offset weirdly. This always indicates that I didn’t plug the cable in correctly when I put the laptop on the desk. Re-seating it always fixes it.
I use the laptop closed. Don’t like multiple displays.
Life is not perfect for me, the driver for the Wacom tablet on my desk never recognizes it when I wake up the computer, so I have to unplug and reconnect the tablet. Which is annoying given that I don’t have a mouse/touchpad/etc available on the desk. (I’m an artist, I use the tablet for pretty much everything.)
Dunno what you’re doing. I assume you’ve checked obvious things like connecting it with a guest account. And maybe trying the computer on other displays outside your home?
Good luck finding a cause, this sounds super annoying.
(He also mentions "high refresh rate".)
1) macOS doesn't support controlling external display brightness, a utility called "MonitorControl" solves that.
2) Audio L/R balance on the USB audio adapter gets set wonky periodically, it's apparently a common issue with external audio to the point that there is a utility called "Balance Lock" to kludge past it.
There’s a comparison table between Lunar and MonitorControl here: https://lunar.fyi/#comparison
MonitorControl’s DDC code for M1 is borrowed from Lunar so they both do the same thing at the low level.
I just came to terms with having to re-plug the cables once in a while or whatever seems to be the workaround for the current technology's woes.