Looking for Docking Station for 4 Monitors - 2 Direct to Mac, 2 via Dock - DisplayLink no longer playing well.

Solution Confirmation:

Had a video conference meeting in Zoom today and the WindowServer process did not spasm its processing into bringing my system to a crawl, or even make it sluggish. Was able to run some Docker containers and demo work with my coworker screen sharing their confirmation without any problems or distractions from my system staggering with WindowServer load.

So this brings the solution for me to be one of:

• Apply the latest MacOS update (currently 14.7.6 for the MacBook I was having trouble with)
• Restrict the docking station to one monitor:
  • Connect three of the four monitors directly to the MacBook Pro (intel) using Thunderbolt connections.
    • One connection was using a HDMI to Thunderbolt 3/4 dongle since that monitor lacked any direct Thunderbolt interfaces. I've read in other forums that DP to Thunderbolt is problematic with MacBooks but I have not verified this.
  • Connect all peripherals through the docking station.
  • Turn off DisplayLink if you're using it.
  • Will likely need to reboot, perhaps twice, to let WindowServer work out its new bearings.
• Maybe both of the above - haven't done testing to isolate if it was the update, the rewiring, or both.

I haven't tested with MS Teams yet but at least I have a currently working solution with Zoom.

I decided to go the alternative route and plug all my peripherals into the docking station with the second monitor's connection going directly to the MacBook port I was reserving for one-off peripherals. It's a curved Dell lacking any Thunderbolt ports but I found a couple of HDMI to Thunderbolt 3/4 adapter dongles.

The Good:

Nothing became significantly worse. Peripherals all still worked. All monitors were displaying.

The Bad:

The WindowServer process was still behaving obnoxiously in not only its CPU usage but also in having to get my display rotation/size settings and geometry arrangements reconfigured again as well as jumbling all my window placements. Partially understandable given it thought it was working with a new set of display geometries but frustrating in that only one display's settings should have been affected with its contents relocated to other displays while instead all displays lost their settings and got their contents jumbled about.

Additionally I restarted to see if getting WindowServer reniced would improve things and that resulted in the system no longer displaying the application dock (no matter how I toggled it to display), the wallpapers were all wonky, things were still sluggish, and I had to do all the reconfigurations yet again.

The Unfortunate:

Due to the afore mentioned Bad I checked for MacOS updates and there was a fresh one today. Applied it and all the previous problems resolved and WindowServer stopped being so obnoxious. On the down side, I applied that update before I got the chance to have any video conference meetings to do an isolated test of the reconfiguration. I'm hopeful the meeting tomorrow will go without problems but unfortunately, if it does, this means I'll need to eventually go back to the old arrangement, start the DisplayLink manager again, and arrange some time with someone to help me test if it was the system update.

The Ugly:

The constantly parroted lies and misleading insinuations that this is a hardware issue are disappointing to see in others' integrity - to say the least. This very same hardware was doing the task without ANY problems for years before recent software updates.

Let that sink in.

• • The same hardware.
  • The same apps.
  • The same docks and multi-monitor work arounds.
  • They worked for years before recent SOFTWARE updates.

This was a problem imposed by software design decisions. By who - I don't know. Could be OS API limitations imposed on the app developers, could be the app developers trying to chase a perceived trend. I'm open to discussions about why those design decisions were made and I can be swayed that they were good decisions as I suspect they likely had very good reasons behind them.

Don't go misleading people with this - your problem is you don't have the latest Apple hardware - sales pitches. It's transparently grifty at the worst, and makes you look like you have a loose grip on basic reasoning at the best. You're not idiots but you clearly didn't think these responses through either.

Do better.

The thing is - this clearly isn't a hardware issue as it was working perfectly fine for years.

Let me restate that:

This setup was working perfectly fine doing video conferencing for multiple years.

And again, since the response given is parroted so often:

• • The referenced hardware - that hardware which is being claimed to be not enough.
  • It was working for multi-monitor video conferencing with absolutely NO issues.
  • It was doing this for years.

Past updates to MacOS gave DisplayLink issues for a while but they resolved those issues with an update. Things went back to working great for - video conferencing - for years after the Mojave hiccup.

Recent updates to video conferencing apps are not playing well with DisplayLink. I'm starting to suspect this is because of library dependency issues pushed by Apple to the video conferencing teams. Given the conspicuous amount of pushing Apple silicon Max chips as the solution - it wouldn't be a stretch of the imagination to wonder if the issues were purposefully engineered in an effort to push Apple silicon sales. It's probably more of a software architectural disagreement but the consistently harped upon claim that the problem is a hardware issue - which it clearly IS NOT - leads me to question the reasonableness on the Apple apologists' end of the conversation.

Thanks for the more constructive feedback. I have tried this. I can keep my meeting windows to the two direct Thunderbolt connected monitors and I still get WindowServer overloaded.

It also looks like the Microsoft Defender my work insists on is jumping on the bandwagon of trouble by ramping up its own CPU usage as well. This further complicates things but MS Defender's processes are a waist high hedge bush to WindowServer's full grown oak of CPU usage. Sometimes they take turns competing for who can lag my system more when doing video conferencing but WindowServer usually ends up smiting all challengers into grass clippings by the time I give up and just let everyone know I can no longer take part in the meeting as a video conference.

I'll also note that my current WindowServer lagging my computer issues started with the Sonoma update to allow videos as live wallpapers.

I had a whole slew of new features I had to disable, and multi-desktop workflow practices I had to stop, in response to that update. Still even then, I was able to do video conferencing - on ANY of my monitors - without problems using both MS Teams and Zoom.

I think the new kernel security layering that was done with Mojave was an initial step towards shutting the DisplayLink approach out of the MacOS eco-system, and then Sonoma's live wallpapers update.... whatever Theological "Video Editors are Gods Above All Others - AND - We Shall Design for No Lesser Users" philosophy is going on over in the Apple-verse is a path in the wrong direction.

Look - I'm all for doing great video integrity for my fellows in the video editing field who have a lot to put up with but leave an escape hatch for us mortals working with code editors and occasionally needing to do video conferencing with little need for exacting and lossless frame integrity. You can get me about 90% of the frames of my coworkers sitting there near motionless as they talk or sharing a screen full of code or web-page design mock-ups and you can do it with jitters and I'm fine but this philosophy of purity above operability is not for me.

Imagine this very real and common correlation to a person hooking up four external monitors to their MacBook Pro...

They also want to connect their own keyboard and mouse (likely through a KVM). Since they're doing video conferencing they want to connect an external camera too - since they're in clamshell mode given that with four reasonably sized monitors they don't see much use for the 16-inch sitting awkwardly in the way somewhere. The built in display is "an option" for work on the road and all but I'm using the MacBook as a portable workstation to plug into different docking stations - not some ironic joke to play on myself.

Hence my dilemma: 2/4 ports dedicated to direct external displays; 1/4 ports dedicated to docking station for two additional monitors; 1/4 ports dedicated to other hard-wired peripherals. I connect the KVM via the docking station which offers a slew of additional connection options for my other peripherals.

Perhaps a solution may lie with your suggestion though:

• • Ditch the docking stations entirely and just wire my peripherals via the monitors if I can do so. This is an option I at least have not tried.
  • Alternatively: Plug ALL peripherals into the docking station and plug 2nd monitor hooked to docking station directly into 4th port.

It sounds like you're suggesting that two displays ARE doable over one cable via a dock that doesn't make use of DisplayLink's virtual screen splitting approach.

Naming a dock that can handle this successfully AND not crater my system when I join video conferencing meetings in MS Teams or Zoom would be an outstanding and reassuring response. That would be the answer to what I'm looking for as I've been unable to find ANY clearly affirmed docks that claim to both support multiple extended display monitors over one Thunderbolt connection AND not have issues such as slowing the system to a crawl when joining video conference meetings and sharing screens.

I was using DisplayLink docks as they worked and the associated options were priced competitively. I'm not married to them though and will gladly use a premium dock if I can find one that actually supports the physical screen real estate my aging eyes are increasingly demanding of from my setups.

I've even looked into housing external graphics cards in the past as a way of offloading graphics processing from the MacBook to an external device but it looked like Apple was headed away from supporting that direction as an option at the time I looked into it. I'd be elated to find out Apple's direction has changed back to supporting that long term.