[Chicago] OT: Displaying a Macbook/MBP screen to an external monitor only

Atul Varma varmaa at gmail.com
Mon Jan 14 19:26:12 CET 2008


Someone at our last ChiPy meeting asked me if it was possible to
display a Macbook/Macbook Pro screen to an external monitor
only--i.e., not have the image show on the laptop screen.  At the time
I didn't know the answer to the question, but when I was fiddling
around with the brightness on my screen over the weekend, I found one
answer.

If you set the brightness on a Mac laptop screen all the way down, it
actually turns off completely.  IMO this is more humane than most PC
solutions I've seen, because, among other things, it means that the
"display configuration toggle" button only toggles between two states
(mirror and extended desktop) instead of three or more.

In any case, if you want to display a Mac laptop's screen only to an
external monitor, just set the display mode to mirror (using Fn-F7)
and then set the brightness of your laptop screen all the way down.

I've heard that another way to do this is to shut the lid on your Mac
so that it goes to sleep, and then plug in an external monitor,
keyboard and mouse and "wake it up" with the mouse/keyboard.  The Mac
will then be usable and display its image to the external monitor, but
its lid will be shut.

(Sorry to post this to the Chicago list, but I'm not sure who
originally asked me the question.)

- Atul


More information about the Chicago mailing list