Connecting M4 MacBook Air to 2 external displays with lid closed

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Connecting M4 MacBook Air to 2 external displays with lid closed

I'm trying to connect my M4 MacBook Air to 2 external displays, specifically the Samsung C27F398 and the Dell P2213, through an HP docking station that I found lying around. For some reason, my laptop will only find one monitor, and when I use detect displays, it still won't find the other monitor, but the display on one of the monitors will mirror to the others. I'm pretty sure that this isn't a hardware limitation, since Apple did announce that it can support 2 displays even with the lid open. How do I get both displays to extend?

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 15.5

Posted on May 20, 2025 3:36 PM

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Answer 1

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Servant of Cats

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May 20, 2025 4:25 PM in response to thef80m3

What HP docking station?

Macs only support connecting one display to a plain USB-C dock, or up to two displays to a Thunderbolt dock. If a USB-C dock supports 2+ displays, or a Thunderbolt dock supports 3+ displays, it is a sure bet that the dock either

Drives some of the outputs using the equivalent of DisplayPort MST daisy-chaining – something that Macs don't support and that often results in the appearance of "mirroring", or
Drives some of the outputs using a second-class workaround like DisplayLink – a workaround which requires the installation of a matching driver on the computer to get any output at all.

In the former case, there may be a specific combination of display outputs on the dock that will work.– as those two outputs are running off different video signals from the Mac, instead of off copies of the same video signal.

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