When you plug in a second monitor to Macintosh computer, it may display an exact copy or ‘mirror image’ of what is on your first display. This is called mirroring. This is fine if you are doing a presentation and you want to see on your laptop screen exactly what is on the projector, but it’s not very useful at home to have the same thing on both screens. If you’d like to see different things on each screen, so the second screen gives you more desktop space, you need to turn mirroring off. Here’s how.
1.Go to’ system preferences’ in the Apple menu, and then to ‘ displays’ and click on the ‘arrangement’ tab.
2. Deselect the box that says ‘ Mirror Displays’
3. You have now turned off mirroring and should have two separate desktops!
NOTE:
On some machines, for example lower end of iBooks and iMacs, to differentiate them from the higher models, Apple have disabled the ability to have two separate displays so that your external monitor is permanently mirroring what is on your main monitor.
There is a program that can re-enable this feature to turn on the ability to have a separate second display. It’s called screen spanning doctor. It automatically checks that your Mac is able to run a second monitor and then makes the appropriate changes. You can download it from here.
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How do i make the external monitor my main screen so that when for example, photoshop is open, i don’t have to go back to the MBP to access the top menu bar like File, Edit, etc… With my set up the MBP is on the left, my new 24″ is on the right. I am able to align the dock to the right and it shows up on the right hand side of the 24″ screen. But the menu bar for all applications is back on the MBP.
It real simple, just open up “system preferences” and the click on “displays” it should show your two displays, one of the displays will show a little menu bar, now just click and drag the bar to whatever window you’d like it in.
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