Dual monitors and fullscreen fiasco, is there a work around?

That's not actually correct.

When using fullscreen apps you can have multiple apps running and you can use screen grab on a differnet space (open it in desktop, click capture - selection, move space, make selection).

I use it all the time.

I agree though, it isn't the issue for this thread. Is there any word from Apple about this yet?

Distill discussion to this comment...

jpcampbell wrote:

Agree this is a pretty big oversight in functionality. I should be able to go full-screen in my code on one screen and have a browser to test the code in the other. Right now, my poor external monitor just becomes useless in full-screen mode.

... and help me with this;

I ran into a fellow who said he was an Apple tech working for Staples. I mentioned this problem with multiple monitors and full-screen app mode (whoops, that's single-app mode to those who have experienced this shortcoming).

This fellow said if you use an Apple Thunderbolt Display this does not happen and you CAN go full-screen app mode on one screen (say the Macbook Pro) and the Thunderbolt display fully available and not rendered useless with a grey linen background.

I am very interested in to know if this is true or not. I do not have an Apple Thunderbolt Display available to verify or to dispell this as an ugly rumour.

Can anyone out there test this and report back to us? Thanks.

Would be interesting to know, but not sure worth the upgrade if it required an Apple display. And I have to amend my "useless" comment. At least I have PiP on the external monitor fed with DISH Network, so I get some use out of it.

Still annoyed by this functionality and I hope a solution is found. Thanks.

KB from Ontario wrote:

This fellow said if you use an Apple Thunderbolt Display this does not happen and you CAN go full-screen app mode on one screen (say the Macbook Pro) and the Thunderbolt display fully available and not rendered useless with a grey linen background.

I am very interested in to know if this is true or not. I do not have an Apple Thunderbolt Display available to verify or to dispell this as an ugly rumour.

If it IS true, it would be an obvious move to thwart competition with other display makers and give Apple an unfair advantage, in the same way that Lion and Snow Leopard (and Mountain Lion?) disable SSD TRIM support for non-Apple SSDs (which can be worked around by editing a kernel extension or running a 3rd-party app to do it for you). It would give me an upgrade path, although I'd be miffed that my perfectly good 23" Acer would be destined for the dumper.

So, yeah, verification of this new bit of information would be very much welcomed. I have a bit of a hard time imagining it to be true, but if it is, it does change things for my future with Apple.

"This fellow said if you use an Apple Thunderbolt Display this does not happen and you CAN go full-screen app mode on one screen (say the Macbook Pro) and the Thunderbolt display fully available and not rendered useless with a grey linen background."

This is completely inaccurate. I have several thunderbolt displays at my work and they act just like normal displays -- they will become greyed out if you are running 10.7 or 10.8 and run a full screen app on another display.

Thunderbolt displays have tons of problems too -- the flickering issue is horrible, Apple still has not fixed that -- we've had to get 5 of them RMA'd and three of the newer ones that came in still have the flickering problem. I know it's unrelated and a rant, but seriously...it p's me off 🙂

NiqueXyZ wrote:

This is completely inaccurate. I have several thunderbolt displays at my work and they act just like normal displays -- they will become greyed out if you are running 10.7 or 10.8 and run a full screen app on another display.

Thunderbolt displays have tons of problems too -- the flickering issue is horrible, Apple still has not fixed that -- we've had to get 5 of them RMA'd and three of the newer ones that came in still have the flickering problem. I know it's unrelated and a rant, but seriously...it p's me off 🙂

Thanks for the clarification. Disappointing, but not at all unexpected. The quality issue, however, IS unexpected. Sorry to see that you continue to have trouble with them.

NiqueXyZ wrote:

...

This is completely inaccurate. I have several thunderbolt displays at my work and they act just like normal displays -- they will become greyed out if you are running 10.7 or 10.8 and run a full screen app on another display.

...

OK. Just so I'm clear, you've tested this configuration and you're verifying that even WITH an Apple Thunderbolt Display attached to a Macbook Pro there is NO difference in behavour of "full-screen app" mode - all but one monitor becomes greyed out and and essentially useless.

Thanks for letting us know and clearing up what amounts to an ugly rumour from a supposed Apple tech.

KB from Ontario wrote:

NiqueXyZ wrote:

...

This is completely inaccurate. I have several thunderbolt displays at my work and they act just like normal displays -- they will become greyed out if you are running 10.7 or 10.8 and run a full screen app on another display.

...

OK. Just so I'm clear, you've tested this configuration and you're verifying that even WITH an Apple Thunderbolt Display attached to a Macbook Pro there is NO difference in behavour of "full-screen app" mode - all but one monitor becomes greyed out and and essentially useless.

Thanks for letting us know and clearing up what amounts to an ugly rumour from a supposed Apple tech.

Apple techs work for Apple, not Staples.

I agree, it's a little silly to disable (black out) secondary monitors when one is in fullscreen mode. It makes the fullscreen functionality entirely useless for me. Luckily VLC allows fullscreen to be fullscreen on one monitor while not hijacking the others. I figure, if you want the other monitors or TVs black/blank, you'll turn them off, you don't need it forced on you. Some of the new features of Lion are awesome, others are a little lame.

KB from Ontario wrote:

NiqueXyZ wrote:

...

This is completely inaccurate. I have several thunderbolt displays at my work and they act just like normal displays -- they will become greyed out if you are running 10.7 or 10.8 and run a full screen app on another display.

...

OK. Just so I'm clear, you've tested this configuration and you're verifying that even WITH an Apple Thunderbolt Display attached to a Macbook Pro there is NO difference in behavour of "full-screen app" mode - all but one monitor becomes greyed out and and essentially useless.

Thanks for letting us know and clearing up what amounts to an ugly rumour from a supposed Apple tech.

What's funny is this dumb "feature" is what is keeping me from buying an Apple-branded thunderbolt monitor.

What's funny is this dumb "feature" is what is keeping me from buying an Apple-branded thunderbolt monitor.

You would certainly loose functionality if you are someone who uses Mission Control or Fullscreen Apps.

Having said that, you could run your applications not in fullscreen. But doing this often times makes it seem pointless to even use Mission Control since a lot of your applications would still need to be set to "all Desktops"

TheSmokeMonster wrote:

Having said that, you could run your applications not in fullscreen. But doing this often times makes it seem pointless to even use Mission Control since a lot of your applications would still need to be set to "all Desktops"

That's all a matter of individual work flow, I guess. I run six desktops across two monitors and the only app I've ever set to all desktops is Finder. Even if I need to copy from one app and paste into another across different desktops, I typically just Cmd-Tab to the target app. Quick and no fuss at all.

I found a simple work around for two programs that severly suffered from this full-screen bug. For Quicktime, just use the Quicktime 7 player - it has a different full-screen mode that switches only one monitor and leaves all the others untouched, i.e. fully useable for other applications.

As for Apple's DVD player, I copied version 5.4 from a Snow Leopard installation. Like Quicktime 7, it comes with its own full-screen mode, which leaves all other screens useable.

It's not a workaround but, here is how I think it could be made to work better:

1. Each application in Fullscreen mode would take control of the monitor it is inhabiting, and only that screen.

2. This would in effect treat that monitor as the primary display for that app, giving the user access to the Menubar and Dock as they would on the actual primary display.

3. Other screens are unaffected by this, therefore allowing the user to have multiple fullscreen-ed apps and non fullscreen-ed apps running simultaneously. Excluding apps on external monitors that are not in fullscreen mode, all apps would have access to the Menubar and Dock as needed.

4. Users with Hot Corners enabled would be able to use them on their external displays with fullscreen-ed apps as though they were on the primary display.

5. Upon closing the app it returns to it's normal screen mode, other apps and screens are unaffected.

6. Upon turing off a monitor with an open fullscreen-ed app that app is moved to the right side of Mission Control's list.

7. Users could move fullscren-ed apps between displays within Mission Control. The system would automatically swap applications between the two displays upon user interaction of dragging a fullscreen-ed app from one display to another with an app that is also in fullscreen mode.

What do you guys think?

The issue with all of the suggestions in this thread, including this one and any that I could come up with is this:

From OS X Human Interface Guidelines:

Use modern APIs to enable a full-screen window. If your app enabled a full-screen window in earlier versions of OS X, you should update your code to take advantage of the full-screen behavior introduced in OS X v10.7. Users expect to see windows transition to a new space and they expect to be able to switch between them and see them displayed in Mission Control. When you use the modern APIs, you can take advantage of the system-provided support for these behaviors, so that you can give users a consistent experience.

Apple has decided that users expect full screen apps to be in their own space, be visible in MC and be switchable using trackpad gestures. Unless a suggestion satisfies all of those things, and has consistent behaviour on one screen and multiple screens, it won't even be considered.

The fact that users actually don't 'expect' their additional screens to become useless when, e.g. watching a movie is apparently beside the point...