mid-waltz Posted July 17, 2007 Share Posted July 17, 2007 I've been searching like crazy, and the only official way to output video to only the external display on a macbook, is with the closed lid mode (aka clamshell mode). Which means it's necessary to: - close the lid - connect the power adaptater I know I can put the macbook in clamshell mode and then open the lid (to avoid warping up the screen, since the upper part of the keyboard gets pretty hot), but if I put it to sleep I will need to close the lid again to keep it in clamshell, and I'm not gonna spend my days opening and closing the lid just to get video output where I need it. Plus, I want to be able to run only one monitor with or without power adapter. It's crazy that such an advanced os like osx doesn't have this option! If I reboot on windows, with the same machine, I simply have to click on a nvidia pull down menu to output to the external monitor only (and it will remember my preferences). I can't believe there isn't a way, even if it's a hack. Does anyone know of any solution to this? I'm hoping people here will know how to do this, after hacking the system upside down... (Please don't mention turning off the screen brightness of the main LCD. I'm talking about spanning the desktop only to the external monitor). btw I'm using a Macbook Pro of the last generation (santa rosa, 2.2ghz, LCD, nvidia card). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
munky Posted July 17, 2007 Share Posted July 17, 2007 here's a dumb idea... connect your external display, make it the primary (drag the tiny representation of the menu bar onto it), then hold down F1 on the MBP keyboard to turn the display off. whats wrong with that solution? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mid-waltz Posted July 17, 2007 Author Share Posted July 17, 2007 here's a dumb idea... connect your external display, make it the primary (drag the tiny representation of the menu bar onto it), then hold down F1 on the MBP keyboard to turn the display off. sigh... I thought I said not to mention that that's like outputing to an external display and simply turning its power off. If you don't see it, doesn't mean it's not there. The videocard will still outputing video to that screen, video resources are used for nothing, the cursor / windows still go to that area, etc.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
munky Posted July 17, 2007 Share Posted July 17, 2007 uh, yeah ok. didnt spot that. couldnt you arrange the windows so that the internal display is like diagonally opposite the other one? that would stop things dragging accidentally to the internal display. i dont really see why it bothers you this much tho Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mid-waltz Posted July 17, 2007 Author Share Posted July 17, 2007 couldnt you arrange the windows so that the internal display is like diagonally opposite the other one? that would stop things dragging accidentally to the internal display. that doesnt work, the cursor still enters the area when you touch a corner (eg for exposé) i dont really see why it bothers you this much tho think of it this way: if I don't deactivate the main screen, apart from window/cursor problems or eye candy weirdness (eg opening dashboard), the videocard is still rendering 1.296.000 pixels (1440x900), 60 times per second, for nothing. I'm no expert, but I believe half of the video memory is also lost on that invisible screen. I don't think I'm a control freak if that bothers me! It's a basic feature of videocards, so there should be a way to do that in a mac. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Ramm Posted July 17, 2007 Share Posted July 17, 2007 I don't think it's that big of a deal. All it's taking the toll on is the battery (even not that much), so you just need to recharge it (which you would have to do at some point eventually)... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mid-waltz Posted July 18, 2007 Author Share Posted July 18, 2007 setting the video output is a basic feature on dual cards. If you guys don't need it, great for you. I'll try with the hackers at the osx86 forums or irc. Thanks anyway Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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