Use another Macbook as a extended display for a Macbook

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Use another Macbook as a extended display for a Macbook

There is another post on here tagged with MacBook Air stating that you can't use another MacBook Pro as an extended display for a MacBook Pro....well you can, as I just did it after much faffing around. The 2 MacBooks in Question are my New 2024 MacBook Pro M3 Max which I wanted to use as the primary display, and a 2020 Intel i9 MacBook Pro. Both machines are running Mac OS Sonoma 14.6.1.

Initially the older Mac would allow you use the newer Mac as an extended display but not the other way round. The new Mac (as similarly described in the other post) would only allow you to extend the mouse and keyboard to remotely control the older Mac using side car. However, in settings on both Macs searching for AirPlay brings up AirDrop and Handover settings. If you enable Allow Airplay For Anyone on the same network on both Machines - it works just fine! Now I have my old 2020 MacBook Pro as an extended display for my new M3 Max!

Posted on Sep 15, 2024 2:12 PM

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Answer 1

Sep 15, 2024 2:27 PM in response to Endorph1n

That sort of connection is NOT a full-motion Video connection.

It might be ok if all you need is slow-to-change data like program listings, stock quotes, or spreadsheets.

in general, because the Mac does not have any full-speed video INPUTS, you can not use such a display for fast-changing data without giving up a LOT.

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Answer 2

Endorph1n Author

Level 1

4 points

Sep 15, 2024 3:32 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Grant, thanks for your response. I guess I just wanted to use it for a side-by-side display of additional data so that I could work on the new machine whilst referencing data from the extended display on the old one. However, following your comment - which wasn't my intended use case - I've just done a little experiment and I'm currently watching a YouTube streaming video in a mirrored Safari window at a resolution of 2160p (4k) 60fps and its as smooth as butter and the sound and video quality is excellent. Don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that it would be fine for professional 8k video editing etc (I'm not a creative professional, just an average consumer so I wouldn't know where to start when defining what acceptable would be for such operations) but actually I was surprised just how good it is.

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Use another Macbook as a extended display for a Macbook

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