Q: Dual monitors and fullscreen fiasco, is there a work around?

I just have to put my say in there.  This no multiple display full screen business is total crap.  I don't know anybody that likes it.  As a developer who works mostly from the terminal and in a browser window, I'd really like to fullscreen chrome in one display and iTerm2 in the other and just shoot my way around the OS with keyboard shortcuts, but I'm stuck with the chrome tabs and address bar and the apple taskbar taking up unnecessary space at the top.  A lot of the developers in my area have just waved the white flag and gotten rid of their second monitor.

I don't know what Apple was thinking when they made this design decision.  I can see where this would be a pain for graphics designers who want to have their editing tool on one monitor and their video on the other.  Web developers want their coding environment on one display and the browser on the other.  I'd imagine mobile developers would want the iOS virtual machine on one monitor and their coding environment on the other.  The average user I'm sure would benefit from being able to have something up on the second monitor, as well. 

Apple, I like OS X, but this was a pretty bad design.  Fix it in the next release.

Hey Mike,

Don't give up yet. The Retina display is really good, and Apple has made significant chanbes in the upcomming OS release, Mavricks.

I read about what will be introduced with Mavericks after I posted here.  100% approval on the multi-display in fullscreen support .  I guess there are some people that won't like different spaces per monitor, but I sort of prefer that DWM-ish behavior.

Now, if only I could have a tiling window manager like DWM or XMonad... but THAT is picking nits. 

To me, the full screen mode is still broken in Mavericks. My setup is dual screen, 30" + 24" rotated. I have my programming IDE on the left 30" and a testing Chrome browser on the right 24". But I also have GMail and other stuff on another Chrome window on the 30". I can't seem to cmd-tab to this window without manually exiting the full screen mode of my IDE. I just get to the right Chrome window on the 24" and if I try to cycle between windows within app, I no longer have the ability to go to another screen.

The rules seem to be: when cmd-tabbing to an app, only if there is only a window for this app on the currently full screened screen, switch away the full screen and show this window. So as long as I have a Chrome window on my right screen I can NEVER get my IDE to move away and show the Chrome window on my left. Borked.

The bugfix called "Mavericks" is free. And it doesn't solve the issue yet.

Mavericks even remembers where the windows were when you re-attach the second monitor !

It politely  puts every thing  back there on the second monitor for you.

Swiping between dual screen workspaces on two 27" displays always was a bit nauseating.

I think I will stop following this thread at long last :-)

hedefalk wrote:

 

The rules seem to be: when cmd-tabbing to an app, only if there is only a window for this app on the currently full screened screen, switch away the full screen and show this window. So as long as I have a Chrome window on my right screen I can NEVER get my IDE to move away and show the Chrome window on my left. Borked.

What about Cmd-` to cycle between Chrome windows once that app has focus? That's about the only thing I can think of that might help.

Edited to add: *FACEPALM* I just noticed that you wrote "get my IDE to move away and show the Chrome window on my left". The IDE is on an entirely different desktop than the Chrome window. That's how fullscreen mode is implemented: The windowed app going to fullscreen switches to an entirely different desktop. If you view your desktops from Mission Control, you'll see your Chrome windows still sitting where they were, but the IDE in fullscreen has its own desktop all to itself. At least, that's the behaviour on Lion and Mountain Lion. My apologies if Mavericks has changed the fullscreen behaviour.

Trane Francks wrote:

The windowed app going to fullscreen switches to an entirely different desktop. If you view your desktops from Mission Control, you'll see your Chrome windows still sitting where they were, but the IDE in fullscreen has its own desktop all to itself. At least, that's the behaviour on Lion and Mountain Lion. My apologies if Mavericks has changed the fullscreen behaviour.

Yeah, the problem is that I can't get to my left Chrome window even if I try to middle-jump to the right Chrome window first. Trying cmd-´ (it's cmd-< on sv_SE though) just toggles between the Chrome windows on my right screen. It's like my left Chrome window never existed until I close down the full screen mode on my IDE.

hedefalk wrote:

 

Trane Francks wrote:

The windowed app going to fullscreen switches to an entirely different desktop. If you view your desktops from Mission Control, you'll see your Chrome windows still sitting where they were, but the IDE in fullscreen has its own desktop all to itself. At least, that's the behaviour on Lion and Mountain Lion. My apologies if Mavericks has changed the fullscreen behaviour.

 

 

Yeah, the problem is that I can't get to my left Chrome window even if I try to middle-jump to the right Chrome window first. Trying cmd-´ (it's cmd-< on sv_SE though) just toggles between the Chrome windows on my right screen. It's like my left Chrome window never existed until I close down the full screen mode on my IDE.

That's because that key combination doesn't switch between desktops; it only cycles through the applications on the current desktops. And that's the problem with Apple's implementation of fullscreen for me: Putting an app fullscreen causes it to open a new desktop on which to display in fullscreen mode. When you exit fullscreen mode, it goes back to its original, windowed desktop and then deletes the fullscreen desktop from Mission Control.

All in all, not a very good solution. Sorry for your pain, and I'm sorry to hear that even Mavericks doesn't fix the problem.

Question for you: When you switch desktops, do both monitors change or is it only just the monitor that has application focus. I heard that Mavericks would decouple the extended desktops and treat each monitor separately. Personally, I hope that's not the case.

Trane Francks wrote:

Question for you: When you switch desktops, do both monitors change or is it only just the monitor that has application focus. I heard that Mavericks would decouple the extended desktops and treat each monitor separately. Personally, I hope that's not the case.

The answer is "it depends." It depends on whether your Mission Control option "Displays have separate Spaces" is turned on or off.

Personally I think the full-screen situation has improved greatly in Mavericks.

Network 23 wrote:

 

Trane Francks wrote:

Question for you: When you switch desktops, do both monitors change or is it only just the monitor that has application focus. I heard that Mavericks would decouple the extended desktops and treat each monitor separately. Personally, I hope that's not the case.

The answer is "it depends." It depends on whether your Mission Control option "Displays have separate Spaces" is turned on or off.

 

Personally I think the full-screen situation has improved greatly in Mavericks.

Thanks for the info. It confirms what I've read since the release. Apple apparently listened during the beta testing and kept it possible to continue using an extended desktop paradigm. Mavericks finally makes me want to buy a new MacBook. Good job, Apple!

Network 23 wrote:

 

Trane Francks wrote:

Question for you: When you switch desktops, do both monitors change or is it only just the monitor that has application focus. I heard that Mavericks would decouple the extended desktops and treat each monitor separately. Personally, I hope that's not the case.

The answer is "it depends." It depends on whether your Mission Control option "Displays have separate Spaces" is turned on or off.

 

Personally I think the full-screen situation has improved greatly in Mavericks.

Nice catch. Didn't notice this. Personally, extended desktops (the Mountain Lion behavior) make absolutely zero sense to me. Having each monitor operate as a seperate space is so much more conducive to my workflow. Now I just wish I could have mail go fullscreen but keep the ability to drag a reply window to a seperate space/monitor. 

not sure if this is what you're talking about - but if you uncheck the "show on all displays" box in the full screen tab of quicktime 7 pro's prefs, you can watch full screen on either - or both monitors.

Mac 101

bscepter wrote:

 

not sure if this is what you're talking about - but if you uncheck the "show on all displays" box in the full screen tab of quicktime 7 pro's prefs, you can watch full screen on either - or both monitors.

That's how I do it. I made QT7P my default video player for all its supported encodings and it works very nicely to enable watching fullscreen on the external display without having to move my menu bar over there, as is necessary with DVD Player for fullscreen movies.

One interesting thing is that the latest iPhoto goes fullscreen mode on the monitor from which it was windowed. Apparently, the force-to-primary display is not mandatory in Lion and is up to the app to decide. It would have been nice had DVD player been given the same treatment.