How can I turn my Macbook Pro display off instantly?

Question

Level 1

38 points

How can I turn my Macbook Pro display off instantly?

Hello.

I love having my laptop connected to my TV via HDMI cable to watch TV shows. But I dont like putting it in Clamshell mode because I have a VLC Remote app that lets me put the next film on instantly without touching the laptop.

I like to have the laptop display fully off / black so that i'm not see two images (TV and Laptop), so what I do is hold the brightness key down to turn off the display.

Does anyone know of a menu bar app, or a command to turn the display off instantly with a single click?

Thank You

Posted on Jan 26, 2014 7:02 AM

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Answer 1

Jan 26, 2014 8:27 PM in response to T.Edwards

Look in System Preferences/ Mission Control/Hot Corners

from here you should be able to select a corner and choose "Put Display to Sleep"

Then you just drag the cursor to that corner of the screen you just set and the screen should turn off.

(Moving the cursor should turn it back on)

You may be able to do something similar to one of the <F> keys.

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Answer 2

SSI JDE

Level 1

135 points

Jan 27, 2014 12:46 AM in response to T.Edwards

Or with the keyboard ctrl-shift-eject.

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Answer 3

david267

Level 1

34 points

Feb 11, 2014 11:15 AM in response to SSI JDE

No eject key on new Macbook Pros so I used the hot corner solution.

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Answer 4

BobHarris

Level 9

53,147 points

Feb 11, 2014 2:05 PM in response to david267

No eject key on new Macbook Pros...

I guess it depends on you Macbook Pro. My 15" Macbook Pro (2011) has the eject key to the right of the F12 key far upper right corner of the keyboard.

My wife's 13" Macbook Pro Retina (2013) has a power button there, HOWEVER, Control-Shift-Power does exactly the same as Control-Shift-Eject. That is to say Control-Shift-Power will turn off the screen.

So assuming you have a power button, use

Control-Shift-Power

NOTE: my older 2011 Macbook Pro has a power button in the case, not part of the keyboard, AND Control-Shift-Power also works on my older Macbook Pro to turn off the screen.

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