How to use 2 monitors on your mac

All macs that have a built in display also have a ‘video out’ port. It will look like one of these:

ports

An external VGA Monitor which are the cheapest and most common external monitors you can buy, have a lead like this:

vga

So to plug them in you need an apple display adapter that looks like this:

adapter

A note of warning. There are two different kind of display adapters, because there are two kinds of mac ports. Make sure you tell the apple guy when you order what model mac you have (eg macbook, imac etc) so that you get the right adapter. 

Plug it in, and your mac will automatically find it and you’ll have a second display!

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6 responses to “How to use 2 monitors on your mac”

  1. Brian F Harris

    Wow! I have one of those stashed here somewhere..Wondered what it was. Now I may be able to use it,if not,at least I know what it is.

    Reply
  2. Tylar

    I plugged my adapter into my mac and connected the VGA cable from the adapter to a Dell moniter. I see what looks like a mac background but I am unable to move between the two desktops. Can you help?

    Reply
    1. admin

      Go to system prefs – displays and you can arrange them and work out where they are in relation to one another. Then you can move the cursor off the one to the other!

      Reply
      1. Xobb

        What if we want to use the monitors separately? I have an iMac and I have to sit away from it some, so I constantly zoom in on it. But every time I want to move the screen in the direction the second monitor is, it just messes up some. I don’t want to have to share one mouse to the two monitors [the second monitor being a cintiq].

      2. admin

        Xobb, if you click the box that says ‘Mirror displays’ you will get the same on both displays.

  3. ivan

    What if i do not want to use mirror displays and have the same movie going across monitors?
    is it possible?

    Reply

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