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With a Windows laptop you can toggle between the laptop screen and external displays. One or the other, or both on. Can I do this with my late 2011 MacBook?
When I have my MacBook connected to my HDTV I only want to see the display on my HDTV. Can I turn off the MacBook display?
MacBook Pro (13-inch Late 2011), El Capitan, 10.11.3
What happens if you close the Mac?
The Mac has had very flexible options to use multiple displays since the early days of the Mac-II circa 1987. But the assumption has always been that you wanted to use those displays.
There are many options to have different items on different displays, including only a blank background, and you can turn its brightness down. But there are not simple ways to turn it OFF.
If you simply close the Mac, it goes to sleep, and you get no picture on the external.
There is a way you can add an external keyboard and external mouse, and place the Mac in "closed clamshell mode", but I count that as not very simple, and the cooling is not as good with it closed.
It goes to sleep, otherwise it would over-heat since it cools through the keyboard.
Thanks...
Thanks, I always thought Apple was pretty clever. Can't believe there's no way to do this. I'm trying to get a display signal only to my external HDTV. Just don't need it on the MacBook, very distracting having two screen on at once when watching movies.
First, turn off mirroring. Then the displays are independent. This gives you "Extended Desktop", like this:
drag the windows until they agree with the way your two displays are on your bench. Then the mouse moves freely across the boundary between the displays, and can drag a window (like the movie-viewing window) with it onto the HDTV.
To get rid of the window border, try "Full Screen". In some cases, this may even blank the built-in display (but not turn it off completely).
This may sound stupid, but how do you get to the Thunderbolt Display tab? That's the screen I've been looking for, very similar to Windows.
Thanks Grant...
Sorry. That example was in a graphic I grabbed online.
System preferences > Displays ...
... the middle tab will be Arrangement, if (and only if) you have multiple displays active. The window name is likely to be the Primary display (which is determined by dragging the tiny menuBar onto the display you want to be Primary).
When connected to an HDTV, can I turn-off my MacBook(late 2011) display?
