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Irritating Problems Using Multiple Monitors on a Mac Pro

I have a late 2013 Mac Pro running Mac OS Mojave 10.14.6, attached to which are three identical Dell PH-K321 4K monitors. These three monitors are connected directer into three of the six available Thunderbolt slots offered on the back of the Mac Pro. My complaint is not that the monitors do not work; they do, with crystal clear precision. (I have one monitor turned vertical in the center flanked by two horizontal with all three sharing the same horizontal axis; a way-groovy set-up.) My grumble is that after waking up from sleep or restarting, the applications that I had running invariably relocate themselves to other monitors, all needing relocating and re-proportioning to make sense of everything again. The most irritating problem is that when one application prompts me with a dialogue box, it appears on another monitor, and more often than note, hidden under another application, forcing me to hide all the other applications just to find it.


I have rifled through the Apple FAQs on the matter of multiple monitors without finding a similar problem, and Dell's technical support websites never seemed to have heard of Macintosh computers, let alone have drivers to support their products, so I lay my problem at the feet of the true experts, real customers who use Apple products to their fullest.


My thanks in advance!

Mac Pro, macOS 10.14

Posted on Jan 4, 2020 11:44 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jan 4, 2020 12:19 PM

If you have multiple monitors you should be able to Assign apps to open only on your nominated Display.

For example if you open Safari, Control-click on the Safari icon in the Dock select Options and a submenu will show where you can Assign Safari on Display 1 or 2 or 3. Now you can customise how your apps are displayed to suit how you work.



Also open System Preferences> Mission Control and make sure Automatically rearrange Space based on most recent use

is unchecked.

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5 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jan 4, 2020 12:19 PM in response to Raoul_Duke

If you have multiple monitors you should be able to Assign apps to open only on your nominated Display.

For example if you open Safari, Control-click on the Safari icon in the Dock select Options and a submenu will show where you can Assign Safari on Display 1 or 2 or 3. Now you can customise how your apps are displayed to suit how you work.



Also open System Preferences> Mission Control and make sure Automatically rearrange Space based on most recent use

is unchecked.

Jan 4, 2020 1:09 PM in response to Raoul_Duke

Tut Tut Raoul you have been able to nominate Desktops/ Displays since the introduction of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard

about 10 years ago.

Do you know you are not restricted to the one Desktop for each Display, you can make more and spread your apps

open windows to those to reduce clutter. Open the Mission Control app in the Applications folder, when opened move the cursor to the top right of the screen and click on the plus button to add a Desktop, 16 is the maximum I think.

The default keyboard shortcuts to move between Desktops is Control + left or right arrow keys, or Control + the number of the Desktop you want to move to. In System Preferences> Keyboard> Shortcuts> Mission Control you can change these

defaults to your own.



Irritating Problems Using Multiple Monitors on a Mac Pro

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