3 displays show up in settings, unable to make it work

[NAL100]

Just installed BetterDummy - I have the 2021 M1 Macbook Pro, running on Monterey.

When I create the dummy display and then plug in my external display, I have 3 displays: The Macbook display, the Dummy display, and then "Unknown" which is my external monitor. I can't figure out what the right combination of settings is to make this work, and the readme shows it as just being one display (the dummy one) with no external one listed. How should I set this up so that it works?

Also, issue #2, when I create the dummy, it is changing the resolution of my MBP screen which I have set to scaled so the text will be bigger; it seems to reset it back to the regular display, and the text shrinks. In the display panel, however, under the MBP, it still shows it as being scaled the same as it was before. When I delete the dummy display, then all of a sudden it goes back to regular. In this case the MBP is set to Main display.

[waydabber]

Hi @NAL100,

• you need to set the Unknown display as a mirror of Dummy display. You can right click on the Unknown display under Displays in System Preferences and set it to "Mirror for Dummy..."

• Whenever there is a configuration change (new display is added for example), macOS will create a new display configuration for the arrangement. This usually means that all display resolutions are reset to default. You need to set up everything to the desired resolution for this display arrangement as well. When you disconnect a display (for example the dummy), the settings of the previous arrangement is restored. Each display arrangement has its settings separately stored and handled in macOS - resolution changes made in one arrangement will not carry over to the other. This is why you see resolutions change when connecting the dummy and then change back when you disconnect them. I don't think this is a very good or intuitive system to be honest, but this is how macOS works by design.

Hope this helps!

[NAL100]

Hi Waydabber, thanks for your help on this. So I set that up and I can see the display mirrored on my external, however it is extremely blurry. Meaning that it is unreadable, unusable. Not just by a little. I am mirroring it onto a 1920x1200 display (24"), which I know is not optimal from reading your other posts however I feel this goes beyond just "not optimal" to actually there being an error with the settings.

Here are my settings.

On the BetterDummy setup, I created a 16:10 dummy, which is "Associated with" the Unknown Display, and with the 1920x1200 resolution.

In the Displays settings here is what I have:

Macbook Pro Built-in Liquid Retina
Use as: Mirror for Dummy 16:10
Optimize for: Dummy 16:10
Resolution: Scaled (2nd option)

Dummy 16:10
Use as: Main Display
Optimize for: Dummy 16:10
Resolution: Scaled (1920x1200)
Color profile: Dummy 16:10

Unknown
Use as: Mirror for Dummy 16:10
Optimize for: Dummy 16:10
Resolution: Scaled (1920x1200)
Color Profile: Display

Anything you see in these settings that I should change to have some sort of usability to the display?

With regard to the second point on how the settings change, it seems to be actually changing the resolution so it would make sense that it created a new profile.

[waydabber]

Hi, I should understand better how the screen looks like before and after to see if there is some error.

If you set the dummy to the same resolution as the panel (1920x1200), you will not see much improvement even if you set to HiDPI resolution, but should not see decrease in terms of quality. This will result in 2x supersampling (so zoomimg will improve and screenshots as well but other than that you won't see much difference). MacOS by design choice does not use subpixel rendering like Windows (which makes fonts look sharp on low res displays) so if you are looking for a Windows-like clarity, you'll be disappointed. If you somehow use low res scaled resolution with a mismatching panel, that will result in a very bad image quality, but based on what you wrote I don't think that this is the case.

[NAL100]

The external monitor natively has a 16:10 1920x1200 so that is why I set it to that. Do you mean that I should decrease the resolution on the dummy display to see improvements in clarity? And do I decrease it only in the display preferences, or also in BetterDummy preferences? I assume you mean by HiDPI resolution that it would be doubling the resolution numbers, but I also wouldn't know where to put that.

So I played around with this a bit. it is difficult to get the settings correct because if I do them in the wrong order, it makes me go back to square one because it will end me up on a completely empty display with or without a mouse, so I basically have to unplug/replug to get the configuration to reset.

Somehow my external display was recognized for what it is in Mac OS and now has the SyncMaster name; whereas before it is Unknown. Plugging it directly in without BetterDummy seems to produce fairly OK results although I would prefer everything to be sharper so I am wondering if there's a way to do that. However, after I put BetterDummy on with the same settings as I posted above, (Unknown is now Syncmaster and Color profile is set to Syncmaster), these are the results. I took a few pictures with my phone camera so you could see:

https://imgur.com/a/AN16s0P

[waydabber]

Hmm. This looks super strange indeed. It's as if a special sharpening effect (that makes things worse) was applied to the screen. What happens if you enable low resolutions in BetterDummy's Settings and you choose 1920x1200 (low res) as dummy resolution?

I am not sure whether the Samsung display applies this effect on the screen or the Mac. Are you using HDMI? The fact that macOS changes the name of the display may indicate that it somehow detects it as TV and sends the signal as YCbCr (like a BD player would) and the display applies a special effect in this case.