Apr 28 2008
Multiple Monitors, Moving Menu Bar
Working with multiple monitors is a must when doing any serious coding work. Code on one side, output on the other. No more swapping applications from the foreground to background.
Mac OS X make working with multiple monitors a snap: plugin in the secondary monitor, open System Preferences, click on Displays, click on the Arrangement tab and arrange the displays by dragging and dropping. That’s it. In the figure below the larger box is the secondary monitor (larger view area) and the smaller is my laptop.
There is one default setting that I want to mention here that hopefully will save you some time. When you set up an additional monitor the menu bar stays on the original display. Depending on your arrangement, this may be no worry. In my case I wanted the secondary monitor to be the primary display. When working on an application in what is now my primary display, it’s anything but intuitive to move the mouse back over to the laptop display to click a menu item.
I spent some time searching for a tip, trick or hack to fix this little problem, to no avail. I went back into the system settings any number of times looking for a preference setting. I even did a search for a Mac Defaults option to specify where the menu should land. Again, no luck.
Here’s the punch line, the fix was so obvious, it wasn’t obvious. If you look closely at the figure above, notice the second line in the description area…”To relocate the menu bar, drag it to a different display.” Heh, was that there the whole time…??
So here’s the tip: to move the menu bar simply drag-n-drop as you prefer.
Okay, so here’s where I have a question for you. I recently upgraded to Leopard (10.5), and I’m curious if this feature existed on Tiger (10.4)? Essentially I’m looking for an excuse as to why I didn’t see the obvious solution to my question, right in front of me. Maybe you can help me out here :)
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Here’s a picture of Mac OS 8’s display control panel from 1997:
http://a248.e.akamai.net/7/248/51/586201168293913/www.info.apple.com/images/kbase/58620/58620_1.gif
Notice the “To relocate the menu bar:” part? It’s been there a while :)
Sorry to say, it’s been that way since at least OS 8.
Thanks (I think). Bottom line is: “Read the directions” (or perform better searches) :)
I don’t work on mac, but it seems nice.
Just want to say, that you are not the only one. I was looking for that myself and did not see it until your blog. Thanks.
The problem might be that some things are too simple for smart developers as we are ;-)
Man, I can’t believe how dumb I’m feeling, because I couldn’t figure this out and gave up. I had resigned to having the iMac as my primary display, but this is so much nicer!
And to think the instructions are right there in the text. I didn’t read that either and 2 other guys here in the office missed that also. All developers.
I think the thing that makes this not intuitive is that the toolbar doesn’t highlight when you click down on it to drag but the whole screen does highlight.
Don’t feel dumb. I think this is just a great lesson to all of us developers about how users don’t read help! Especially on the Mac, where you expect everything to be obvious, if the interface doesn’t afford a certain behavior, it’s totally understandable to miss a feature, even when it’s literally spelled out for you.