Mac secondary display install#
Mac secondary display full#
Mac secondary display pro#
Mac secondary display software#
Mac secondary display Pc#

Scrolling is smooth, the text is gorgeous and the cursor movement is nearly perfect.

Mac secondary display pro#

In my tests using a 14” MacBook Pro connected to Steve’s 2017 27” iMac, the iMac’s display looked absolutely perfect using Luna Display to drive it.

Mac secondary display full#

(I’m not sure what it launches on Windows so I’ll just stick to describing the Mac menus from here on out.)īy default, Retina Resolution is not enabled, but hopefully, I’ve convinced you to use Thunderbolt so there’s no reason not to get the full resolution of whatever Mac you use as a secondary display.

From there you can arrange the screens as you would with any secondary display. If this works for you, great, or you can hit the third button that says Custom which launches the Displays preference pane. You’ll also see a Luna Display Settings window with options for Arrangement and Retina Resolution.Īrrangement gives you two very basic options, one showing the secondary Mac on the left and one on the right. With Luna Display Primary running on the host machine and Luna Display Secondary running on the secondary Mac, and Thunderbolt connection made, after doing the permissions dance you should see your primary machine displaying to the secondary Mac. You also have the option of running Luna Display over Ethernet but I didn’t actually have a way to test that easily. I tested using Thunderbolt from my MacBook Pro to the dock Steve uses for his iMac and LG display, hoping to drive both that way, but cursor movement was jumpy and weird, and scrolling wasn’t as clear as we would have liked. To get the best results, you’ll want to connect to the secondary Mac using a Thunderbolt cable. Luna Display can drive a secondary Mac using WiFi, but that isn’t really going to give you the performance you need.

Mac secondary display Pc#

To be clear, either a Mac or PC can be the primary machine, but only a Mac or iPad can be the secondary display.

Mac secondary display install#

To perform this miracle of engineering, you install the Primary Luna Display app on your primary Mac or PC, and you’ll install what they call the Secondary Luna Display app on the Mac that will be just a display. You can now use a second Mac as a display for your Mac (or PC!) I know that sounds crazy but I’ve tested it extensively and it’s pretty magical.

Mac secondary display software#

The great news is that the folks at Astropad have been working on new software to give us amazing capability with Luna Display. I still liked the Luna Display solution better than Sidecar because you get the entire screen instead of that weird truncated display with buttons of Sidecar, but Sidecar being free made it pretty compelling. Back then it was pretty darn cool, but it got somewhat Sherlocked when Apple came out with Sidecar. In 2018 I told you about a $130 chicklet-sized USB-C dongle called Luna Display from Astropad that you could plug into your Mac and drive your iPad as a secondary display using some software on both devices. There is a solution to all of this and I think it could be applicable to a lot of you out there even if you don’t have Steve’s exact setup. The 5-year old Intel i9 iMac can do the job, but boy does it complain with super-loud fans. The demands on his machine are really high as he ingests two video feeds from me across our internal network, combines that with his video feed, and pushes it all of it up to YouTube. I get that, but I also really think it would make more sense to use the more capable Mac for the live show. All those gorgeous, high-resolution pixels are more compelling than the speed of the machine. With a 27” LG Ultrafine display hooked to his 5-year-old iMac, he finds that a better machine to work with most of the time than his wicked-fast MacBook Pro. Now don’t feel too sorry for him, since he has a 14” M1 Max MacBook Pro. I feel their pain because Steve is one of those people itching for an Apple Silicon 27” iMac. They want an Apple Silicon 27” iMac and they want it now. Lovers of the 27” iMac are also impatient right now because we’ve got so many other models of Macs that run circles around it with their sexy Apple Silicon processors and unified memory architecture. This is so frustrating to those who have a gorgeous 27” display sitting in the closet trapped in the body of an older iMac. If Apple made a display that didn’t cost $5000, we’d probably not be so sad about this but other than the LG 5K Ultrafine (which is a great display), we have literally no other options as good as the 27” 5K iMac.

I’ve never understood why Apple doesn’t let us have target display mode on the newer iMacs, and it’s a real shame. Many people wish they could repurpose aging iMacs as secondary displays, but iMacs newer than mid-2014 don’t support target display mode. The desire for a new Mac is normally well before the end of the useful life of an iMac. Like all Macs, they seem to last a very long time. IMacs have spectacular screens, especially the 5K iMac. 27-inch 5K iMac Can’t be a Display … or Can It?