Multi-monitor tricks
The key benefits of using multiple displayed are flexibility and focus – often
simultaneously. If you’re a digital artist using the likes of Illustrator, Photoshop or Pixelmator, you can dedicate one display to artwork. This means your work is never covered by tool palettes, and your palettes residing on their own display means more of them can be kept on screen at any given moment.
Similar advantages can be had in audio and video apps. With Logic Pro X, choose Window > Open Main Window to open a second window, and fiddle with the layouts until one display is primarily a mixing desk and the other is used for tapping out notes. In Final Cut Pro, put the viewer on a secondary display to get a more detailed, larger look at your edit. (Sadly, Apple’s consumer equivalents to these apps – GarageBand and iMovie – are resolutely single-screen only.)
Spread things out
Dual displays are also great when you require ongoing access to multiple apps. Whether penning a potential best-seller or fine-tuning a presentation for work, having one display devoted to an office or writing app and another for research can be efficient. If you use a minimalist word processor like iA Writer, you can have that full-screen on your MacBook, turning it into a futuristic typewriter, while a larger display contains Safari, a mind-mapping tool like MindNode, or inspirational imagery in Preview. Similarly, if you use Windows-only software, run it in Parallels Desktop on one display, leaving the other for macOS; this can work really well if you’re a web designer and need to test sites across browsers on both operating systems
Alternatively, you might want to monitor data of some kind – to keep an eye on your schedule in Calendar, for example. To keep an eye on your schedule, rather than switching to that app and away from whatever you’re doing. Similarly, you might stick Mail on a second screen so you can glance at emails when they come in, rather than getting a notification, opening the app, and getting sucked into a billion other messages. Or, if you hate productivity, go for the ultimate procrastination setup of using a second display for YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.
Comfort counts
Incidentally, whichever of these ideas takes your fancy, pay close attention to ergonomics. It’s best to have your primary display right in front of you, your eyes in line with towards the top of the screen. The other should be easy to turn to and briefly use.
If you spend a long time interacting with any display that’s set at an angle, ensure you can shift your chair and input devices accordingly. Don’t spend a long time twisted in your seat, tapping on an awkwardly placed keyboard, or you may give yourself back problems later on.