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External Displays Swapping - Arrangement Not Remembered!

I'm hoping for some help.


I just bought a MacBook Pro (2021 M1) and I'm running Ventura.


I have attached two monitors and am continuing to use the MacBook's monitor for a total of three monitors.


The problem is that, after arranging the external monitors, whenever the Mac goes to sleep or reboots the monitors lose their arrangement. I have to go back to settings and re-arrange them every day. This is, needless to say, maddening.


There has to be a setting I'm missing. Can anyone help?

MacBook Pro

Posted on Nov 4, 2022 11:19 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Nov 9, 2022 1:35 PM

to get a Mac display to become active, you need the Mac to query the display, and the display to answer with its name and capabilities. Otherwise, the display will not be shown as present, and no data will be sent to the display. "No signal detected" is generated by the DISPLAY, not by the Mac.

 

This query is only sent at certain times:

• at startup

• at wake from sleep — so momentarily sleeping and waking your Mac may work

• at insertion of the Mac-end of the display-cable, provided everything on that cable is ready-to-go

• hold the Option key while you click on the (Detect Display) button that will appear in Displays preferences (from another display)

 

so try doing some of those things and see if the display comes alive.


Similar questions

8 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Nov 9, 2022 1:35 PM in response to RealEstateDude

to get a Mac display to become active, you need the Mac to query the display, and the display to answer with its name and capabilities. Otherwise, the display will not be shown as present, and no data will be sent to the display. "No signal detected" is generated by the DISPLAY, not by the Mac.

 

This query is only sent at certain times:

• at startup

• at wake from sleep — so momentarily sleeping and waking your Mac may work

• at insertion of the Mac-end of the display-cable, provided everything on that cable is ready-to-go

• hold the Option key while you click on the (Detect Display) button that will appear in Displays preferences (from another display)

 

so try doing some of those things and see if the display comes alive.


Nov 7, 2022 2:06 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Thanks for your response, Grant.


I have two identical Asus VE247 displays. This caught me off guard because I just switched from a mac mini and they worked great.


I have them connected through a startech "splitter" with two HDMI cables plugging into the splitter and a usb 3 input into the mac.


I did sort of resolve the issue by going to desktop & Dock/mission control and toggling off the automatically rearrange spaces and displays have separate spaces buttons. The end result of that is that the displays stay arranged but now I have no toolbars on them. At this point that is the lesser of two evils, though if I could find a way to leave those toggled on that would be best for me.


Again, thank you for your super-quick response.

Nov 29, 2022 2:47 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

I would like to jump on board this discussion because this is something I have suffered for year with different Mac laptops and have found very frustrating. I keep hoping it will be fixed with every new OS release or machine update to no avail. I now have an MacBook Pro with M1 Max.


What is the answer to the question: is it possible to run non-Apple monitors (I have 2x external Samsung 4K monitors) without this re-arrangement of desktop/windows spaces happening every time the machine wakes up?


If the answer is no, end of the story and I will have to keep re-arranging.


If the answer if yes, how to do it? Thank you.

External Displays Swapping - Arrangement Not Remembered!

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