Dual Monitors with Air M1?

Hi

you need a display link adapter, but only if your monitor has a displayport input (i think) - my two 4K monitors work perfectly over DP, with a display link adapter, from my M1 MBA.

hth

Triple screen with macbook pro m1 [working]:

https://youtu.be/yxrM394Rka4

make sure the second dock is compatible with displayLink drivers

Yeah I ended up spending another £100 on a DisplayPort dock and luckily it works fine and has allowed me three additional monitors and the mbp seems more than able to cope with it. So I don’t get why they don’t natively allow it. Seems like I’ve paid for a downgrade that ended up costing me more in the long run, when it should have been an upgrade..

You can’t, without DisplayLink.

CalDigit requires a Mac with an Intel processor in order to support two external monitors.

Dell D6000

neuroanatomist wrote:

DisplayLink is a combination hardware/software ‘trick’ to drive another display. It’s limited to 1080p (HD) resolution and the refresh rate is very slow and laggy. IMO, it’s not a good solution unless you just want a basically static display of something.

DisplayLink user here, with my 2016 MBP I'm able to drive my external display at 4K 60Hz no problem. Haven't had any issues with the refresh rate yet.

No one's pretending anything here, we're just letting know others what works for us i.e. those who need extra screen work space to increase productivity. As above, this might not work for all i.e. heavy video processing or gaming but works for us so no need to call us "clueless".

I'd probably get two ultra wide 49" monitors and hook them up to a Mac Mini M1 if I wanted more video horse power without extra dependencies and portability but I don't and this setup works perfectly. I will probably buy MacBook Pro 16" M1(X) if such comes out to remove DisplayLink from my setup completely although it'll depend on price and whether people have issues again with it. If they do will stick to DL as it does the job perfectly for me in now super quiet room.

There is no need for an update on this. The M1 chip does not have hardware support for multiple external displays on the MacBook Pro models. You will need to wait and see what the next generation chip can do. There is no workaround besides using DisplayLink, which is obviously less than ideal.

Right. I tried DisplayLink. It doesn’t feel integrated at all: the resolution is bad, it doesn’t support vertical orientation, and it requires screen recording permissions, which I only give when it’s absolutely required.

Hi everyone,

I've got an 2020 MacBook Pro M1 and also face the issue of the limitation of only being able to connect one external display from the Thunderbolt ports.

I work in IT and love working on this M1 MacBook so I thought I'd share a work around that I've been using that has worked fairly well for me. Basically, I own an old 2nd gen Apple TV that I had lying around spare (as I'm currently running the HD and 4K models in my house) so I'm just using AirPlay to the Apple TV from my M1 MacBook with the Screen Mirroring option set to the "Use as seperate display" option setting. It's not a perfect fix as there's a slight lag with the mouse cursor (which seems to depend on how good the network connection is at the time) when trying to use it over AirPlay, but it's a decent work-around and has definitely been a workable way to use a second external monitor on my M1 MacBook Pro at work.

I use a Wavlink UG69PD2.

HTH.

I think the trick is that you also need a USB-A to HDMI adapter in addition to any hub that you have to implement the work around.

https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/11/11/how-apple-silicon-on-a-m1-mac-changes-monitor-support-and-what-you-can-connect#:~:text=The%20MacBook%20Air%20with%20an,parallel%20with%20the%20internal%20display.&text=The%202020%20MacBook%20Air%20with,ports%2C%20beyond%20the%20internal%20display.

From what I've been gathering is that the M1 chip only supports a single external display (next to the build in one). Doesn't sound possible to have it run more than 1 screen. If you need 2, then you'll need to get the Intel powered Air.

Those using rotation - it doesn't work currently on my MacBook Air 13 M1 A2337. Installed DL drivers (Big Sur 11.0, Catalina 10.15 Release: 1.1 13 Aug 2020) software on my Big Sur 11.0 and rotation never works - when changing from Standard to 90, 180 or 270 it freezes the screen then flashes and it's back to 'Standard' ie. horizontal. Unfortunately, I installed some kind of additional login manager from DL which broke my OS X and kept flashing my screen all the time. After installing that add-on via DisplayLink Manager am no longer able to see anything on my USB DL Dell 2515H monitors as before. Each time I run DisplayLink Manager it logs me out so the add on broke it badly and the manager no longer starts. I uninstalled DL completely and the add-on then reinstalled DL driver only but no joy :( Checked and all access in settings is correct for the DL driver as it worked before but only in horizontal.

Also, I have two adapters:

1. UGREEN with HDMI and only one monitor works when connected to it and other directly to MBAir's USB-C port won't
2. Satechi dual HDMI - same thing - only one external monitor at a time.

This leaves me again waiting for DL guys to sort out the drivers... once we had to wait over 8 months to get back our external monitors back working again through their driver!