Mac Studio multi display management: Rinse and repeat 10+ times a day

[Jayson A]

Sorry, apparently I'm not getting notifications for this thread anymore. Is this a script for the display problem or something else?

This is a script that can help you put your windows back after they get screwed up.

Nice, but does this do anything for the dual display chaos, or is it just to keep windows arranged to the setup you want?

You arrange all your windows the way you want them, then you make a script that will get that info for each app, then the second script is where you input all the settings you got from running the first script per app. It would obviously have to be programmed to your own window sizes.

 

[hajime]

So I’ve had a similar issue with HP monitors that tend to not share any identifying information about the monitors and the Mac gets confused. My solution was using one display connected to thunderbolt 3 and the other to HDMI and the Mac never had an issue identifying the main monitor correctly after that.

This method does not work on my new M2 Pro Mini. I have the left display on the left as the main one and the right display as the extended one. Sometimes the left display turns blank saying that there is no input signal. At the same time, the one on the right keeps switching quickly between displaying only what it is supposed to display as the extended screen and everything from both displays as if I only had one display connected to the Mac. The switching is so fast that I cannot go to Settings to do something. I have to unplug one of the display cables.

 

[sebalvarez]

This method does not work on my new M2 Pro Mini. I have the left display on the left as the main one and the right display as the extended one. Sometimes the left display turns blank saying that there is no input signal. At the same time, the one on the right keeps switching quickly between displaying only what it is supposed to display as the extended screen and everything from both displays as if I only had one display connected to the Mac. The switching is so fast that I cannot go to Settings to do something. I have to unplug one of the display cables.

Even if display management in macOS is complete garbage, what you are experiencing tells me it could be either a faulty cable or a faulty monitor, or even a faulty USB-C port in your Mac Mini.

 

[zedsdead]

I have two Apple Studio Displays that I connect to my M1 Max 14” MacBook Pro at home, and 2 LG ultra fines at work (and those are two different screen sizes).

This issue happens across both sets of monitors, not just the LGs. Even though the LGs are different resolutions and sizes, the MacBook sometimes switches which is the main monitor and goes back to the default resolutions (I run them at one setting larger than normal).

Same thing happens at home with the Apple Studio Displays as well, so this is not a brand monitor issue.

This has only happened to me since the M1 products…used to have a 2018 intel MacBook Pro, but only connected it at work…don‘t remember this happening as often though.

It is very disappointing. I haven‘t been using my home desktop since it only supports one display and was going to swap it for a Mac Studio to fix this issue…but this thread has made me think it has nothing to do with the switching back and forth and will happen anyway. Bad bug.

 

[sebalvarez]

Same thing happens at home with the Apple Studio Displays as well, so this is not a brand monitor issue.

It's not a brand monitor issue. It's a computer brand issue, and the company behind that brand, Apple, which is a joke and assigns most of its engineers to work on iPhones and iPads instead of fixing its computers.

I have conducted extensive tests recently that prove without any doubt that the machine and thus the system knows which specific display is connected to which specific port at all times. And some day soon I'm going to start a new thread, since this one is already too long, and I would like people to be able to get to the point and see the tests rather than go through pages of this thread.

But I have all this in a Textedit RTF file which is not as easy as doing a copy and paste, and it's a very long document with dozens of screenshots. So it takes a long time to reformat all that to post it here and in other forums.

But eventually I will, because I want people to see that it's Apple's gross negligence that is causing this, and if I spent a couple of hours straight, plus another hour since then doing different tests, this is something that Apple should've done a long time ago, because I'm not an engineer, just a guy who has been using and troubleshooting Macs and PCs for 25 years or so.

The main point is that the machine knows every single time, what physical display is connected to which physical port. This is more than proven in my tests, in many different ways.

But regardless of that, macOS flips a coin every time the displays wake up, or the machine is rebooted. It's downright pathetic and it has sent my opinion of Apple down to the bottom of the ocean, because this has taken hours of my life, and an amount of stress that is really unhealthy. Because they have known about this for years, and yet they choose to ignore it.

 

[pshufd]

I have four monitors attached to my Studio, 2xDell U2718Q, 1xDell U2720Q, 1xDell U2515HM, and things stay where they are put. Sometimes one particular program will put one Window on the monitor where the rest of its windows are (this program has 6 windows set up) but it happens maybe once or twice a month - but, other than that, every thing stays where it was when I left it.

 

[sebalvarez]

I have four monitors attached to my Studio, 2xDell U2718Q, 1xDell U2720Q, 1xDell U2515HM, and things stay where they are put. Sometimes one particular program will put one Window on the monitor where the rest of its windows are (this program has 6 windows set up) but it happens maybe once or twice a month - but, other than that, every thing stays where it was when I left it.

I'm glad you don't have to put up with the nightmare many of us do. However, that doesn't mean it that it doesn't happen to a lot of people. And it's proven that it's not only people with the same brand and model "twin" monitors.

Just to test this myself, the other day I replaced temporarily my second Samsung monitor for one of the Dells I was using before. So the machine now was connected to two very different monitors made at least 5 years apart, and different brands.

And still, the swap happened several times over just a few minutes of testing.

 

[pshufd]

I'm glad you don't have to put up with the nightmare many of us do. However, that doesn't mean it that it doesn't happen to a lot of people. And it's proven that it's not only people with the same brand and model "twin" monitors.

Just to test this myself, the other day I replaced temporarily my second Samsung monitor for one of the Dells I was using before. So the machine now was connected to two very different monitors made at least 5 years apart, and different brands.

And still, the swap happened several times over just a few minutes of testing.

I have had this problem with Windows in the past and I think that it had to do with the timing of when the monitors woke up from sleep.

Like many Apple problems, it's hard to know how many people this affects or what the cause is. My general approach in trying to resolve problems is to start with a basic working configuration and then adding things to it until it breaks and then trying alternatives to keep it working in a minimal configuration.

 

[Jayson A]

I have had this problem with Windows in the past and I think that it had to do with the timing of when the monitors woke up from sleep.

Like many Apple problems, it's hard to know how many people this affects or what the cause is. My general approach in trying to resolve problems is to start with a basic working configuration and then adding things to it until it breaks and then trying alternatives to keep it working in a minimal configuration.

I programmed a new applescript that quits all my apps, then puts my display to sleep. I do this before I walk away from my computer

 

[macsoundsolutions]

This would drive me nuts, makes me not want to get a new Mac although I’ve been thinking about it. Still rockin my trusty Mac Pro 5,1 with a rx6800xt, and three monitors, one benq 1440p and two asus 1080p. I have never had this problem with the same monitor setup with different gpus over the years and versions of Mac OS. Currently running Monterey 12.6.2. and Martin Lo’s opencore 0.9.0. May be an Apple GPU thunderbolt issue. What about using different adapters on the monitors, so they are all connected via the hdmi ports on the monitor side. Have you tried a pram reset?

 

[Klae17]

This is the exact problem I have with my 16 inch M1 Max. It is EFFING annoying and interrupts all flow. There shouldn't be a need for alternative solutions like resX. Old Macs did it just fine. Why Apple doesn't address this, I dont know. Perhaps they do not have the programming capability to do so.

 

[BrianBaughn]

And the reality is I already bought a license for SwitchresX that I used in Monterey with mixed success, because that program, or any other, can't do **** about a piece of crap code that reports the display situation to it.

But i haven't installed it after I wiped my internal drive and installed Ventura, because I want to make Apple fix this crap, because nobody should pay over $5,000 for a computer and have to do this crap several times a day, period.

Just for the record…does using SwitchResX get around this issue for you? Hard to understand what you mean by "mixed success". I'd just like to know in case I'm ever consulted on this and I don't have a setup that is affected.

I do hope this thread dies by Apple fixing the issue!

 

[pshufd]

I'm dealing with a monitor issue right now but it's a problem from the software vendor where it doesn't work if your horizontal resolution is too large which mine is because I have four monitors. I'm using an old version but it doesn't work on Ventura 13.3 and I do want to get the security updates from 13.3. So I am considering adding an M1 mini on my desktop to drive one of the monitors for that program only.

I am hoping that the vendor does a fix for the multi-monitor bug at some point. It's a pretty crappy way to work around the problem but it would work.

Those are the hacks we use to work around bugs.

 

[macprobuffalo]

It's not a brand monitor issue. It's a computer brand issue, and the company behind that brand, Apple, which is a joke and assigns most of its engineers to work on iPhones and iPads instead of fixing its computers.

I have conducted extensive tests recently that prove without any doubt that the machine and thus the system knows which specific display is connected to which specific port at all times. And some day soon I'm going to start a new thread, since this one is already too long, and I would like people to be able to get to the point and see the tests rather than go through pages of this thread.

But I have all this in a Textedit RTF file which is not as easy as doing a copy and paste, and it's a very long document with dozens of screenshots. So it takes a long time to reformat all that to post it here and in other forums.

But eventually I will, because I want people to see that it's Apple's gross negligence that is causing this, and if I spent a couple of hours straight, plus another hour since then doing different tests, this is something that Apple should've done a long time ago, because I'm not an engineer, just a guy who has been using and troubleshooting Macs and PCs for 25 years or so.

The main point is that the machine knows every single time, what physical display is connected to which physical port. This is more than proven in my tests, in many different ways.

But regardless of that, macOS flips a coin every time the displays wake up, or the machine is rebooted. It's downright pathetic and it has sent my opinion of Apple down to the bottom of the ocean, because this has taken hours of my life, and an amount of stress that is really unhealthy. Because they have known about this for years, and yet they choose to ignore it.

Having your evidence in a stand-alone thread might help apple act to fix this sooner.

My studio is 3 days old and I’ve already experienced this. If we all put in tickets to apple referencing your work that might help get this fixed.

 

[sebalvarez]

Just for the record…does using SwitchResX get around this issue for you? Hard to understand what you mean by "mixed success". I'd just like to know in case I'm ever consulted on this and I don't have a setup that is affected.

I do hope this thread dies by Apple fixing the issue!

I mean, I only have it in my Macbook Pro, and sometimes when I press the shortcuts for the two display sets it works and sometimes it doesn't. But regardless, SwitchresX doesn't keep the role you assigned to them. It's a coin toss like the Mac Studio.

 

[sebalvarez]

Having your evidence in a stand-alone thread might help apple act to fix this sooner.

My studio is 3 days old and I’ve already experienced this. If we all put in tickets to apple referencing your work that might help get this fixed.

Hopefully. And I plan on creating that thread here and on every Apple forum that I can find, except their own communities (forums), because the moderators and I despise each other because they are a bunch of hyper sensitive babies that will take down any post that says anything remotely critical of Apple.

 

[mode11]

This would drive me nuts, makes me not want to get a new Mac although I’ve been thinking about it. Still rockin my trusty Mac Pro 5,1 with a rx6800xt, and three monitors, one benq 1440p and two asus 1080p. I have never had this problem with the same monitor setup with different gpus over the years and versions of Mac OS. Currently running Monterey 12.6.2. and Martin Lo’s opencore 0.9.0. May be an Apple GPU thunderbolt issue. What about using different adapters on the monitors, so they are all connected via the hdmi ports on the monitor side. Have you tried a pram reset?

Ditto. I'm running a 5,1 with an RX6600XT, Monterey 12.6.3 and Lo's OC 0.8.8. One 27" 1440p Dell and two identical 22" 1080p Dells. Have never had any issue like this, though it would drive me nuts if I did.

I'm using DP for the 27", and running the 1080p screens through active DP to DVI adapters (the monitors support DP, but DDC control for brightness etc. only works via the DVI input with this GPU (RX580 was fine over DP)).

Edit: actually, it does work over DP. The issue is that my particular 22” screens briefly go blank after waking from sleep, if they’re connected via their DP inputs. I find this irritating. My RX6600XT has no DVI ports; the passive DP to DVI cables I was using to solve the issue previously don’t seem to pass through DDC commands with this GPU, so I switched to StarTech active adapters instead.

 

[sebalvarez]

I'm using DP for the 27", and running the 1080p screens through active DP to DVI adapters (the monitors support DP, but DDC control for brightness etc. only works via the DVI input with this GPU (RX580 was fine over DP)).

So you mean, you have monitors that are not Apple brand and you still can control brightness with the two buttons in the Magic keyboard, even if it's just the monitor connected to the DVI output?

That's another beef I have with Apple, although I can't be 100% sure that it's Apple's fault. But it pisses me off that if you have an iMac or an Apple display, you can use those two buttons to control the brightness, which is not just useful, for people like me who suffer from migraines, it's necessary. It's not very ergonomical to lean forward (in my case considerably because the idiots at Samsung decided it was a good idea to put only one joystick button in the back of the monitor to control everything), and adjust brightness every time you go from a dark interface like many programs these days, to websites that are mostly white and don't have a dark theme.

But if you adjust brightness so that it's at a good point for your programs that you use most of the time, and then you have to go online to one of those very white websites, it suddenly feels like the sun came out right in front of you.

Now, these two Samsung monitors have an app from Samsung for Windows that controls a numbers of things, two of them being contrast and brightness. I'm fine with the contrast at 75 all the time, but if there's a way to control brightness via a protocol such as DDC, then why is it that my two brightness keys don't do anything with them, or with the Dells I had before?

I mean, there should be a law or something like there is for so many other things, that a way has to be provided for the user to adjust brightness from the keyboard, if the keyboard has the keys. But since there's not, Apple says, we're not going to enable DDC unless we detect an Apple display. That shouldn't be allowed. I shouldn't have to pay $1,700 just for the sake of having brightness control from the very expensive Apple keyboard I have.

 

[BrianBaughn]

The BetterDisplay app that I'm using on my Mac Studio makes the brightness adjustable via the keyboard keys (I have a Mac version of a Keychron keyboard)…and it's applied to the monitor on which my cursor is located. It's very handy and I use it when switching between day and night…or for those horrible white web pages.

This is the description of that feature from the developer:

• Change the display's brightness, volume and colors via software and hardware (DDC) control via sliders and native or custom keyboard shortcuts!

 

[okkibs]

I keep my Macs running 24/7 as a workaround without making use of display sleep or even standby. Over night the wall outlet for the displays as well as all the other peripherals is switched off to save energy, only power to the computers and Macs remains on. The Mac does re-detec the monitors when I power everything on in the morning, but it doesn't move the main display around.

Windows will still be resized though and it's maddening because apps that were in full-screen will be thrown out of full screen and sometimes such a window ends up outside the visible area, so there is no way to even see that window except for the mission control overview. But the moment I select it it disappears again. The solution is to move it to another virtual desktop in mission control, switching to that desktop and then just the corner will be visible on the bottom left edge of the screen, and that allows me to drag it back into the viewable area.

Again, it's maddening. I am still on Monterey as Ventura has workflow-breaking bugs that prevent me from upgrading.

 

[mode11]

So you mean, you have monitors that are not Apple brand and you still can control brightness with the two buttons in the Magic keyboard, even if it's just the monitor connected to the DVI output?

Yes, I use this: https://github.com/MonitorControl/MonitorControl

Controls all three of my monitors simultaneously, changing brightness via the keyboard.

Works over DP too. The only reason I use DVI on the 22” screens is that they have a minor glitch over DP - when they wake from sleep they briefly go blank, which is slightly annoying.

 

[Zillion]

Since recently my monitors keep flickering on and off randomly. Maybe since 13.3. Really irritating. Got 3 Dell displays, 2 of them give this behavior.

 

[pshufd]

Since recently my monitors keep flickering on and off randomly. Maybe since 13.3. Really irritating. Got 3 Dell displays, 2 of them give this behavior.

I have 3 Dell Ultrasharp 4k monitors running off my Studio and I don't have any problems with them. I did upgrade to 13.3 and then 13.3.1 as 13.3 broke some things (Universal Control for me). Which Dell monitors do you have and which cables?

I did have flickering problems with my mini back in 2021 but they were solved with getting better cables.

 

[sebalvarez]

Of all the people here who had this problem, have you had it in the last couple of weeks? Because for me it seems to have stopped. I hope I'm not jinxing it by posting about it, but it's gone. I even had to swap them manually a few times when I needed to, but it always respects the manual arrangement.

I thought it was because I installed the app Lunar (excellent app for various display related tasks), but I checked with the developer yesterday and he told me it's not possible, that Lunar doesn't have anything that would fix this problem.

He thinks maybe Apple fixed it in Ventura 13.3.1 (22E261), something that occurred to me, but the list of fixes doesn't say anything about this.

What are you people seeing in your Macs?

 

[hajime]

I had it on mini m2 base model last week. Along with other issues, returned it.