I need some help with an external monitor on my MBA with Big Sur please

[ozziegn]

So here's my situation. I just bought an M1 MBA and I want to use an external monitor mainly because my 52 year old eyes would prefer using a larger screen. I love my new MBA but I just need a bigger display. So I just picked up a 28" 4K display and it looks great. But I can't seem to figure out how I can turn off my laptop's display so just the external display runs. I'm not mirroring the two displays because I want them to each run at their native resolutions.

Any ideas?

 

[SP_XP]

Hi

If you have an external keyboard and mouse (wired or Bluetooth) connected to your laptop, you simply close the lid of the MBA and you should get the external monitor working at its native resolution ("clamshell mode").

Regards,

S

 

[ozziegn]

Hi

If you have an external keyboard and mouse (wired or Bluetooth) connected to your laptop, you simply close the lid of the MBA and you should get the external monitor working at its native resolution ("clamshell mode").

Regards,

S

That's good idea but unfortunately it won't work in my case because I'm using the laptop speakers for sound and I also use the Touch ID feature to unlock my laptop.

 

[hmkabaker]

Why can't you just leave the MBA display alone, with no open windows, and work directly on the second display? You just need to move the cursor to the left on the MBA until it appears on the second display, if that's how they're arranged. Or you could put the second display on top and move the cursor up until it appears on the second monitor. Then you can turn down the MBA screen brightness.

 

[537635]

Why can't you just leave the MBA display alone, with no open windows, and work directly on the second display? You just need to move the cursor to the left on the MBA until it appears on the second display, if that's how they're arranged. Or you could put the second display on top and move the cursor up until it appears on the second monitor. Then you can turn down the MBA screen brightness.

All great ideas in my opinion. I would also add - change the display resolution of the internal display do "scaled", so you will see larger desktop elements and use the laptop display for... messages, file browsing or some other trivial task, which doesn't require a lot of screen real estate. This is what I do. Secondary display is behind and on top of laptop screen.