We train a MacBook to work with an external monitor

    Buying an external monitor for my MacBook Pro 13 "I could not imagine that I would have to face some inconvenience in daily work. My desire was to get a system in which the external monitor is the main and only one, and the laptop display is turned off. An aggravating circumstance was the fact I don’t have an external keyboard yet and I wanted to use a laptop keyboard for work, which means that closing the MacBook to turn off its display will not work.
    Before buying a monitor, I neglected to study the possibilities of using a MacBook with external displays, because I was convinced that the situation was exactly as good as that of other laptop computers. In other words, I was sure that the MacBook supports a full set of modes for working with external displays, allowing you to habitually switch between modes using the key combination (Fn + F5 or the like). But it was not there.

    As soon as the new monitor was delivered, I unpacked it and connected via DisplayPort to the laptop. The monitor was immediately identified, but it turned out that the MacBook supports only two modes of working with it:
    • Clone / Mirror (the “Mirror Displays” checkbox is checked) when both displays are active and display the same image;
    • DualView (the “Mirror Displays” checkbox is not checked) when both displays are active but independent of each other. Each of them has its own desktop and each one works with its own frequency and resolution settings.


    The options under which the laptop display would be turned off, unfortunately, are not provided. Upon hearing this, I was not upset. Intuition suggested that there should be some kind of workaround. After searching for information on the network and organizing a series of experiments, several workable solutions were found. Introducing a brief how-to.
    Purpose: To ensure that the external monitor connected to the MacBook Pro is the only image source. In this case, you must be able to use the keyboard and touchpad of the laptop.

    Option 1

    Initial conditions: the laptop is turned on, an external monitor is connected.
    Procedure:
    1. Activate the mirror mode of working with an external monitor (Clone / Mirror);
    2. Close the lid of the laptop and wait until the computer goes into sleep mode;
    3. Without opening the cover, wake up the computer by connecting any USB device, such as an external hard drive. A flash drive is also suitable. This will automatically activate the external display;
    4. You can open the lid and use the keyboard and touchpad of the laptop. The laptop screen will remain off.


    Option 2

    Initial conditions: the laptop is turned off, an external monitor is connected.
    Procedure:
    1. Turn on the laptop and without waiting for loading, close the lid;
    2. After the computer boots up, an external display will be automatically activated;
    3. You can open the laptop cover and use the keyboard and touchpad. The laptop screen will remain off.
    Important notice regarding paragraph 3 in the first option described. The Internet suggests that you can use an external keyboard or mouse to wake a laptop from sleep mode. This statement is absolutely true if the keyboard or mouse is connected via USB. My test showed that the laptop does not wake the Magic Mouse from the sleep mode. Unfortunately, I can’t check how things are with the wireless keyboard. But I promise to try as soon as I have it.

    UPD: advice was received to turn off the laptop screen by reducing its brightness to zero. I will explain why this does not fit:
    • Mirror mode. In this mode, the same resolution on both monitors. The internal display is 1280x800. On the external, respectively, also 1280x800 with the supported 1920x1080. Naturally, this is inconvenient to work with.
    • DualView mode. In this mode, the mouse will jump from the main display to the laptop’s internal monitor, which is turned off — to fall into a black hole, so to speak. Which is also not very convenient.
    UPD2: additional options from comments:
    • Wake up the laptop with Apple Remote,
    • Wake up a laptop with an iOS device (iPhone, iPad, iPod) using the Remote program,
    • Wake up the laptop with the Magic Mouse (it turns out to be possible). It’s my fault that I didn’t find it before, I dug deep enough. And you just had to check the Bluetooth settings (thanks for the tip @DimaShlyakov ):

    • Another option is to wake up the laptop with the monitor itself, since there is a USB hub in it: D
    • The most common advice is to buy an external keyboard or use two monitors at the same time, because it is so convenient. Thanks, we will consider.

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