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Macbook Pro 13' 2015 external screen

Hi all, I have a problem with a 2015 MacBook Pro 13, a few months ago the display broke (support said normal wear) since then I have disconnected the display socket from the motherboard and have continued to use the mac with an external display connected via hdmi, on the mac there is mac os big sur and windows via boot camp, but for a few days now it has been giving me frequent problems, in practice when I turn it on it makes the startup sound but nothing appears on the external screen like if he didn't recognize it, until now he had never given these problems, sometimes some of them don't and it seems to do it randomly. Now, I know that basically a macbook isn't meant to work without its screen but so far it was fine, does anyone have any idea what might have happened? Do you have similar experiences? I've already tried resetting the NVRAM and SMC but it still won't connect to the external display.

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 13.3

Posted on May 23, 2023 6:10 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on May 23, 2023 8:02 AM

There was no need to disconnect the internal display, and your mac continues to think it is present and viable.


you need to re-specify [√] Mirror displays, so that the external can see everything.


You could also designate the External as primary display, to get all status info and Menubar, and/or use closed display mode.


The default setup for "extended desktop" shows a blue box for each display, proportional in size and in physical position for the mouse to move between displays.


if you check [√] mirror displays, the two displays are set to a compromise resolution and run in perfect sync, displaying EXACTLY the same data.


Command-BrightnessDown can be used to toggle that setting.



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7 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

May 23, 2023 8:02 AM in response to Alec-18

There was no need to disconnect the internal display, and your mac continues to think it is present and viable.


you need to re-specify [√] Mirror displays, so that the external can see everything.


You could also designate the External as primary display, to get all status info and Menubar, and/or use closed display mode.


The default setup for "extended desktop" shows a blue box for each display, proportional in size and in physical position for the mouse to move between displays.


if you check [√] mirror displays, the two displays are set to a compromise resolution and run in perfect sync, displaying EXACTLY the same data.


Command-BrightnessDown can be used to toggle that setting.



May 23, 2023 8:16 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Yes the problem is that the mac recognizes the main display as the first one so until I put the password when I turned it on it didn't connect to the external display, by disconnecting the monitor from the motherboard I solved this problem, and it worked until at some point it didn't work anymore and I don't know why. I didn't know the command - BrightnessDown combination, I'll try with that.

Macbook Pro 13' 2015 external screen

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