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

The discussion is more and more off-topic. The big question was whether or not there is a workaround for the full-screen fiasco. Well, there is a partial workaround for some applications, which consists of using those versions that come with their own full-screen support, i.e. not using OSX' full-desktop feature. For instance, I have solved most of these issues by installing:

Quicktime 7 (the old player has its own fullscreen mode, just like VLC)

DVD player from Snow Leopard (just copy and paste, the old DVD player has also its own fullscreen mode)

Parallels 8 (make sure to switch it to its own fullscreen mode, not using the one provided by OSX)

Keynote (knows how to use many displays properly)

Adobe Acrobat (does it properly using its own fullscreen mode)

This all does not really solve the issue as such, but makes life a lot easier. Any other application, the only way of dealing with it is to maximise the application window.

The funtional reson behind it in 10.8 is due to airplay mirroring (according to blogosphere anyway).

After complaning about this for so long -- if you look at what airplay does and how it works, it actually does make sense -- however, there should still be an option for power users to unlink displays.

NiqueXyZ wrote:

The funtional reson behind it in 10.8 is due to airplay mirroring (according to blogosphere anyway).

After complaning about this for so long -- if you look at what airplay does and how it works, it actually does make sense -- however, there should still be an option for power users to unlink displays.

For mirroring, I can see the benefit of (optionally) blanking out secondary displays. That said, that paradigm is nonsensical with regard to extending the desktop. And when you add Apple's insistence that Lion and Mountain Lion users expect to see fullscreen apps move to their own desktop, well, it just becomes something out of Monty Python or SNL.

I'd prefer a return to Spaces (good luck with that) rather than any so-called unlinking.

Apple devs probably use Linux, coding and testing OS X on different desktops as VMs under Parallels. ROTFL

I just ran into this myself. I was giving a presentation at a film festival from my laptop. The second display being a projector in a theater which the audience can see and the primary display being my laptop on the podium which only I can see. They are NOT equivalent by any means.

I wanted to show an HD res (1920x1080) short film via quicktime, then talk about it with some Keynote slides. Mirroring displays is not an option because my laptop screen goes 1440, not 1920. Quicktime gives me no way to put the movie full screen on the MOVIE SCREEN. And I don't want to show the film with MacOS window decorations all over it. I want to show the film like a film, on the big screen, unadorned.

The only solution I could find was to drop the quicktime into a Keynote project and show it through Keynote, because Keynote gives you control over which screen to use for presentation. That works fine, but it seems really lame to have to go through Keynote just to get full-screen mode on the second display.

It's hard for me to imagine that many scenarios where the second display wouldn't be the preferred full-screen presentation display. Why bother to plug in a second display unless it's bigger and better than the primary?

Looks like Jony Ive has just been promoted to HI design company wide:

http://9to5mac.com/2012/10/29/svp-of-ios-software-scott-forstall-leaving-apple-n ext-year/

"Additionally, Jony Ive will “provide leadership and direction for Human Interface (HI) across the company in addition to his role as the leader of Industrial Design.” That’s an interesting new role for the Industrial Design guru, who will probably have more of a hand in iOS now."

If there's any hope of getting this issue fixed, it will come from him -- I would say that anyone who is really ticked off by this should send him an email with a link to this thread and their thoughts. As one of the best designers in the world, he would have to at least see things from our viewpoint and consider implementing a workaround.

pygy wrote:

There's a message on this topic on Jony Ive's facebook profile.

Like it if you want him to notice.

Not that I was able to find, but that gave me the idea to post a rather long message to him on his page. With luck, whomever the serf is that reads his page for him will take notice. Just posted a few minutes ago and using my real name (Trane Francks), so it'll be easy to find and like as you see fit, folks.

Some hope?

http://www.cultofmac.com/196267/apple-is-absolutely-aware-fullscreen-mac-apps-on -multiple-monitors-leaves-much-to-be-desired/

Maybee direct your request to Mac Software Engineering Craig Federigh

Brilliant, that worked for me using quicktime 7 command,shift,F on my laptop monitor full screen to view video and work on my other two displays - now I can get back to work!

fullscreen on multi displays is still a bug though, this workaround is (^$)$^#@(*

This is insane, what a f*** up by Apple man they really dropped the ball.

And so I finally upgrade my MBP to Lion and am greeted with this problem everytime I hook up my TV to watch a movie.

It always fullscreens to the laptop screen and not my TV.

Is this some backwards sneaky little ploy to get me to puchase Apple TV or something?

Jokes aside, they broke OS X Spaces and they broke fullscreen with dual monitor... You know what I think I want my old Snow Leopard back.

Maybe I switch away from using Quick Time but seriously Apple sort this out.

Debrecini wrote:

And so I finally upgrade my MBP to Lion and am greeted with this problem everytime I hook up my TV to watch a movie.

It always fullscreens to the laptop screen and not my TV.

The only suitable workaround I've found for software forcing itself to the primary display is to toggle from extended-desktop mode to mirroring for the duration of that task (pressing the F7 key on my mid-2007 MacBook). This works for movies or games where one is single-tasking, but it's still an epic fail for those who wish to do more than one thing at a time.

Maybe they'll address the issue in OS X 10.9, but I'm not holding my breath.

Jason Gallagher3 wrote:

Some hope?

http://www.cultofmac.com/196267/apple-is-absolutely-aware-fullscreen-mac-apps-on -multiple-monitors-leaves-much-to-be-desired/

Maybee direct your request to Mac Software Engineering Craig Federigh

Wow... that is truly a shining glimmer of hope. Lion introduced soo many problems for me... Fixing multiple desktops for full screen apps would actually be the problem I need least addressed. TotalSpaces fixes a lot of the problems.

But this one is problem the most annoying thing at the moment.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1481746

Any threads/ideas known to address that one? ^

Finally,... someone has done their job by creating Firefox plugin to do the right thing.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/old-lion-fullscreen/

Now you can do fullscreen browser presentation on the second monitor.

Just in case enough hasn't been said about full screen mode, I've had ML for about 4 months now on a brand new MBPr and I have to say in the 6 years I've been using Apple products its the worst OS I've ever seen them produce. I'm sick to death of these companies coming out with Phone features on a desktop. THEY ARE TOTALLY DIFFERENT GUYS!!! Stop trying to give me gestures when I'm using a mouse and keyboard. They work great on small screen only devices but if I have a better way to deal with it already then why change things for the sake of change?

Microsoft for years played this game and look where it got them. Focus your energy on making the OS faster, slicker, easier to work with and stop trying to make it a phone for goodness sake. Full screen mode is stupid! We could already maximize windows and we still could do other things, full screen mode takes away all control and throws us to a screen for a single app and removes half of our functionality we use to have. This is not a step up but a step backwards.

I'm not sure what is happening to the OS people but at the moment Linux, Mac and Windows seem to be competing to see who can screw up a desktop the fastest. I'd say Microsoft is winning but the other two are very close behind!!

Very disappointed,

G

Here's one simple method to watch full-screen movies on one monitor while continuing to work on another.

In my case, I have three monitors and I'm running Lion on an older Mac Pro (2 x 2.66 Ghz Dual-Core Xeon).

To do this I use QuickTime Player 7 to play the movie, not iTunes, and I'm watching movies that are already on one of my Mac's hard drives.

1. Open QuickTime Player 7

2. Open Quicktime Preferences

3. Select the "Full Screen" menu - you'll see icons for your monitors.

4. Click the image of the monitor where you want your full-screen movie. It should then be highlighted in red with the QuickTime icon inside.

* Be sure "Background Color: . . . Show on all displays" is unchecked *

5. Close Preferences and choose "File > Open File", select your movie and open it. It will open in a small window on your main monitor.

6. Command-F will send the movie, full-screen, to the monitor you chose in Preferences. Your other displays will be kept active so you can continue working.

I hope this helps.

Also, my apologies if this solution is already covered in this forum - I didn't want to read through all 45 pages.

wayne

"Here's one simple method to watch full-screen movies on one monitor while continuing to work on another."

Thanks for this but it just a work-around for a tiny piece of what Apple broke (not your fault!). I mainly need this for business meetings to show some program on a projector while I'm looking at others on the laptop screen.

What's really sad is that OSX is getting worse at this while Windows (at least Win7 - don't use Win8) is much better at it than before and better than OSX.

It's good for Apple that MS has totally confused their current and potential customers with Win 8 and it's multiple versions and GUIs since some of the new Win8 laptops with touchscreens are pretty amazing and blow away the MBP for user experience. I hope Apple / Jony Ive get's their act together this year before MS does. MS usually messes up on version 1 of anything they do but they keep pushing and pushing and by version 3 (DOS 3.1, Win98, Win7) usually get it right and grab the market.