How do I tell Lion to disable the LCD screen even when the lid is open?

Hi All,

my 2 cents...

i use a Macbook Late 2009 (6,1 the first plastic unibody) basically as TV.

So obviously i need acces to the keyboard, and also for overheating reason i would like to leave the display open but not have the internal display on (what everyone else posting here wants, for various reasons)

the NVRAM never worked for me. the hot corner (put display to sleep, then wake after several seconds) worked fine in LION (up to 10.7.3, never did 10.7.4).

Now doesnt work in Mountain Lion either.

So it is always on.

Naturally i could dim the display, but as i dont not always have the TV on, i find it annoying to constantly dim and undim the display.

anyone have an idea where the magnet on this model is positioned.

iam amazed that one has to revert to such a stone age seeming solution. and considering that magnets can wipe the data on a hard drive, i find this solution really really last resort...

in two years we the loyal apple customers ( i have been on macs since 1998) that kept apple alive in the dark years before ipods and iphones and iGimmicks (that i have and love) will go back to windows or soemthing because apple will be so totally consumer oriented and sandboxed (and virus prone??) that it wont make a difference...

Worked for me!

NOTE: To be sure the command works, do not have external monitor plugged into MBP when you execute the command. After you execute the command, restart your MBP (obviously with lid open); plug in the external monitor; both ext. and MBP monitors will be on; close MBP lid; system sleeps, ext. monitor off; keep MBP lid closed and wake with external mouse or keyboard; system wakes with ext. monitor on; then open MBP lid, MBP monitor will be OFF but with the system running on the external monitor ONLY!

Nice.

The idea is to use a magnet that is just strong enough to trigger the internal magnetic switch inside the MacBook Pro. The placement of the magnet on a late 2011 13" MacBook Pro is on the left hand corner of the case above the built in battery meter. The magnet is situated over the internal battery. The hard drive and internal Super Drive is located on the opposite corner (the right hand corner). As such the magnet is located on the opposite side of where the hard drive and Super drive reside.

It seems that the

sudo nvram boot-args="iog=0x0"

terminal command stopped working after the 10.8.2 update, at least for me. Now when I close the lid everything goes a bit crazy: the computer keeps going to sleep every second or so! Back to the magnet solution for now.

This all seems a tempest in a teapot. It takes me a fast count of 3 to dim my monitor to black and the same to bring it back up. Why is this a problem? What is the point of having a terminal command or a switch or a magnet to turn the screen off?

ehdonhon wrote:

Germanotta:

....

However, if I reboot my laptop and allow it to boot up in clamshell mode to start with, everything still works correctly.

Germanotta: I was going to ask the same thing - have you remembered to do a full restart after using the terminal command? That works for me.

Barry Fisher wrote:

This all seems a tempest in a teapot. It takes me a fast count of 3 to dim my monitor to black and the same to bring it back up. Why is this a problem? What is the point of having a terminal command or a switch or a magnet to turn the screen off?

Barry, if you read back through the thread you'll see that we are all trying to achieve something quite specific: complete deactivation of the internal screen. By dimming the display, you are not deactivating it. Processor and video memory resources are still being used to run the internal display, even though you have the brightness set to zero.

The terminal command is a simple, easy and one time only solution. It only needs to be repeated if you later upgrade to a new version of OS X.

It would still, however, be much better if Apple had introduced a SETTING for this in System Preferences in Mountain Lion. Maybe next time...

System

MBP 15" late 2011

OSX ML 10.8.2

Confirmed that the the terminal command stopped working in OSX 10.8.2:

sudo nvram boot-args="iog=0x0"

Did the following to make it work:

1. NVRAM Reset, then ran the command and reboot.

2. SMC Reset.

After doing both encountered similar results to Germanotta.

Now when I close the lid everything goes a bit crazy: the computer keeps going to sleep every second or so!

I also notice during the 3 second period after I wake the computer from closing the MBP lid that I can still drag windows and other objects to the MBP's monitor.

Going back to: sudo nvram -d boot-args

Sigh.

That's true, after the 10.8.2 update if you want to use only the external monitor you have to restart every single time... definitely not an optimal solution, and my macbook actually froze when I closed the lid immediately after turning it on! I sent a message to Apple using the OS X feedback page, not sure if they care about this but it's better to let them know.

Hi Barry,

It does seem trivial, but there are three very solid reasons why this post just keeps going. First, the change from previous behavior reduces user flexibilty, and for no apparent good reason. Users hate that stuff. Second, the Mac has always been best-in-class with the UI. In this case, the screen control in Windows 7 blows away the latter OSX versions -- a simple "Start-P" keypress in Win 7 universally brings up exactly the options a laptop user wants: a) Internal Only; b) External Only; c) Mirror; and d) Extend. (I hate admitting Windows is better on something, but on this, it just is.) Last, and very signficantly, a LOT of people have bug-subbed this, and Apple does not appear to be listening. The fact that the Terminal-based solution actually went away in 10.8.2 suggests that the OSX engineering team changed something directly related to the screen control. Unfortunately, instead of making it better, they closed a loophole that was giving people an out! I've just given up and let my MBA screen burn away while I'm driving an external monitor...

Here's hoping Apple remembers that a laptop is still a laptop, and not an iOS device, and fixes this soon!

Not only does Windows have superiority on that point, but these days, so does Linux on that point and quite a few others. I've been using Macs for almost 6 years, and Linux for 7 years longer than that, and the strides it has made during that time are impressive. Linux passed Windows a long time ago in terms of quality of UI design and ease of use (there are still catch-up areas, of course) and is closing in on Apple.

Being able to easily turn off the internal display is one of the areas that Linux is best in class. The ease of software installation and update is another (better than Windows, better than Mac, better than anything). Apple is supposed to be the best in UI design and ease of use, and in most areas they are. That's why it seems so egregious when they make something like shutting off the internal display such a PITA for no good reason.

Apple, listen up. Because of my first exposure to a Mac 6 years ago, I nov have, in addition to a Mac at work (the one that started it all) three Macs, two iPhones, one iPad 3, and one iPod at home. That's an awful lot of add-on sales from my exposure to one Apple product. Garbage like this difficulty in turning off the internal display makes me not want to buy more, and in fact, in the case of my new (bought 5 months ago) notebook, I did. The shortlist was a 15" 1680 x 1050 MacBook Pro Vs. an HP Envy 15 with 1080P display. The HP won. The hardware isn't quite as good as an MBP (except for the display, which is better than anything but a retina MBP), but it's 90% as good, runs a lot cooler, and the fact that it runs Linux very well gives me control over how the hardware behaves that I can't easily get with a Mac - yup, things like turning off the internal display from the control panel whenever I want.

What am I going to do the next time my family needs a new notebook? Yeah, there's a very strong chance that it'll be a top-end HP running Linux instead of a Mac. I don't need the hassle, Apple. Win my loyalty back.

The trick I posted (ctrl-shift-eject + close and reopen), does not work anymore on OSX Lion last update (10.7.5) 😟

Laurent