With OS X Lion , MacBooks miss the ability to turn off the laptop ’s screen door when you connect to an external monitor . Which sucks more than you ’d retrieve . Here ’s a simple direction to ( mostly ) fix the trouble .
Update : Check out the improved Terminal command version at the bottom of the post .
you’re able to still run a single outside monitor if you exit the lid of your laptop , but that confine airflow and exposes your showing to a lot of heating . Not good .
rather , go to Displays > Arrangement in System Preferences and change the ‘ independent ’ display to your external admonisher by dragging the taskbar from your laptop ’s screen to the other screen ’s ikon . Now drag the laptop ’s silver screen down a second , so it ’s diagonally connect , alternatively of horizontally . And you ’re done .
There are more than a few benefits to this . One is that if you ’re play a fullscreen game , you wo n’t gamble lose your cursor off to the left or right of the cover . Well , you minimize it , at least . If you drop off it in the bottom left corner , you ’re probably going to die awfully before you get it back . But it ’s much , buch better , at least .
Another is that if you keep your pier on the left side of your screen on your laptop computer , it will be there on your external monitor . That ’s specially utilitarian if you ’re , say , dragging an image from your background or a folder onto an icon on your Dock , like Photoshop . And if you use any third party software program to get Windows ’ Snap functionality , you could snap to either half of your screen again .
This wo n’t fix any resource drain from the 2nd screen . And as a reader points out , you could also just mirror the screens and sour the luminousness down to zero , though that loses the extra screen real the three estates that you ’re dedicating system resourcefulness to anyway . Either way , this solves a muckle of the worry associate with the change .
Update : Former Genius and Giz reader Matt Wood write in with a Terminal command to actually shut off the whole monitor :
I used to operate at the Genius Bar and got the “ how do I turn off my MacBook monitor only ? ” question a lot .
Here is a terminal mastery that s fairly simple that will allow you to keep the lid open for adequate chilling but while using the outside display only . I ’ve been using this method acting with my Thunderbolt display and MacBook Air since the beta of Mountain Lion arrive out and it works perfect . Has all the same characteristics of salutary old clamshell modality . Be sure to keep this write down someplace in the off chance you require to re - install , do a PRAM reset , or just want to unwrap it .
To execute in Terminal :
sudo nvram boot - args=”iog=0x0″
To undo in Terminal :
sudo nvram -d flush - args
Once you typewrite it into terminal I trust you need to accede your password . I then re-start my machine . Now the TRICK is to either re Chalkboard for your machine with the palpebra already close ( hit restart then slam the hat ! ) OR turn the car on for the first time ( then quickly slam the eyelid ! ) once you are past the login concealment you’re able to start the lid .
ALSO : if the machine is asleep , and you simply blank out and open up the palpebra , it will arouse up both display . So just remember to wake the simple machine up with an external bluetooth mouse or keyboard .
This works just like clamshell mode – including all its dull quirks .
Tested and it works dead . Thanks Matt !
How To
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