I am really happy with my multiple display arrangement and would like to share my setup.
Primary
My MacBook Pro is front and center. I use it as my primary screen, keyboard, and touchpad. Some people are surprised I do this because a more typical setup with external displays is to use an external display as the primary one and an external keyboard / trackpad. But here’s why I like it:
- The MacBook retina display is truly great. Why waste a screen in clamshell mode or relegate it off to the side when I could take full advantage of it?
- I love the MacBook trackpad. It’s the best trackpad on a laptop, bar-none.
- I like the proximity of the trackpad in relation to the keyboard. I like that I do not need to move my fingers far to switch between the keys and the trackpad. I feel that less hand travel makes me more productive.
- Since I work remotely, from time to time I take my laptop out of my house and work from other locations like coffee shops. When I am there, I only have my laptop. If I use my laptop screen as my primary display / keyboard / trackpad when at home I feel just as comfortable when I am without my external displays. No need to reorient myself with a new setup when I swap back and forth.
- Having my MacBook centered underneath one of my external displays is an efficient way to have 2 external displays within close visual range. I simply pan my eyes up and down rather than side or side and possibly having to rotate my neck.
I use the primary for editing code and doing my, well, “primary” work.
Center
My external display above my MacBook is front and center, right above my MacBook. It is very easy for my eyes to travel from the MacBook up to this display. Having it centered above the laptop is important to me. I have worked with 2 external display setups before that had the joining of the displays right in front of me. This is such a waste and forces me to turn my head or move my eyes to see the screens.
I use this display with two application windows side-by-side with Slack on the left and my browser on the right. I also have a secondary desktop (Desktop 2) on this display with a full screen browser that has my browser DevTools open for debugging. I can easily get to to Desktop 2 on macOS with a 3-finger swipe to the left.
Vertical Aside
The display on the left is obviously rotated 90 degrees. This allows me to not have to turn my neck too far to see it but still gives me the benefit of a larger display. I use this display for my terminal and source control GUI. I don’t look at this display as often which is why it is to the side.
Top comments (12)
45 degrees? Do you mean 90 degrees? If you mean 45, that would make it diagonal rather than vertical, right?
Also, that is definitely a nice setup. And I'll agree about the MacBook track pad being the best, especially since the newest ones are so large.
I've been thinking lately about how difficult it is to speed up my workflow just because of how often I have to jump between my keyboard and mouse (as nice as my mouse is, and even though using a mouse is what I'm used to).
Hah! Yes, I meant 90 degrees. I've updated it.
Ok cool. Just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something. At first I thought "Hmm... So is he tilting his head and glancing with his eyes instead of fully turning his head? Is this some new ergonomic thing?"
I find it interesting that slack had enough of a priority to warrant even half of a screen. I typically leave slack closed to minimize distraction and check it every hour or two. Same with Outlook. I've had the same job since slack came out so I'm curious if most other people are expected to be immediately available on slack and reply right away?
I regularly have conversations about the things I'm working on with people on Slack - it's minimized otherwise, but then when I need to e.g. talk on a Slack about specific technologies or with coworkers when troubleshooting or something it gets much more priority.
I have similar setup, but slack on the laptop, and IDE on main display, as I see more code and I do not have to look down on the macbook display.
The vertical is dedicated to a Chrome with devtools on bottom.
I swipe slide screens between slack and emails and the browser playing music :)
Awesome ( ˙꒳˙ ) Position and number of monitors are same same. :) I try today.
Do you use any tool for keyboard / mouse sharing?
He obviously don't as what he mentioned in the article.
But perhaps time to time, yes.
Awesome, I will replace git GUI with slack and resize browser to fullscreen (Y)
Interesting idea - I might have to try that out!
Ooh, excellent use of a vertical monitor. I have one at home that I haven't quite figured out how to setup. Thanks for sharing!