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I use a Full HD 24" external display besides my 15" MacBook Pro Retina, on which I use the option for most screen estate regarding the Retina display. In the display arrangement screen, the MacBook Pro is therefore a bigger rectangle than the external display. Is there a way to size these rectangles regarding their "real world size" instead of resolution? I'm annoyed by my cursor teleporting vertically whenever I move from one display to another.

dkaisers
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2 Answers2

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Short answer, no.

'Full HD' is actually tiny compared to the resolution of a retina screen - 1920x1080 vs 2880x1800

The Displays control panel really has no idea how big the screen is, only what resolutions it is capable of.
The relationship it displays is a direct result of that - & your mouse will jump according to how you set the images of the screens against each other.
The most logical method is to align the tops of the screens in the control panel, so you at least have one matching point of reference.

I have 2 identical monitors, so it's not so easy to illustrate - but you want this...

enter image description here

rather than this...

enter image description here

The screen images will snap to 'sensible' locations, but you are actually free to position them any way you like, simply by dragging one of them relative to the other.

Tetsujin
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  • Thanks for your answer, that's really a shame. My setup looks similar to your first picture, with the left (MacBook) screen being a bit taller than the right one.

    In real life the displays align at the bottom, but the right one is about 30% taller than the left one, which causes the cursor to jump quite some distance...

     – dkaisers Sep 30 '15 at 14:33
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Long answer, yes!

I think you want something like this, right?

enter image description here

Main ways to get this result:

  • Use a Mini Display Port (i.e. thunderbolt) to DisplayPort connector, not an HDMI to HDMI connector - you will likely see a lot more available resolutions (i.e. everything above 1920x1080 aka 1080p) if you have a hi-res (e.g. 4k) monitor
  • Use SwitchResX. It is quite fiddly to use, but it opens up a bunch of resolutions which your monitor supports but which Mac OS hides by default
    • You can also use it to add additional Scaled resolutions (same as scaling on your retina display, i.e. they don't change the available underlying screen resolutions, but they do change the apparent space on the screen)
    • And you can even add Custom screen resolutions, but these are super-advanced and probably not what you need!
  • A simpler rough equivalent to SwitchResX, but it won't give you as many options, is RDM which can be installed via a download linked from the GitHub page, or via Brew (brew install avibrazil-rdm).

The above lets you have a LOT more control over the real estate on your external monitor, and then - as you no doubt already know - you can also scale the internal MacBook LCD display:

enter image description here

Combine these. Try dragging some medium size window back and forth between the external monitor and the laptop screen - using all the above, you should be able to find scaling settings which make the sizes match while still giving you a lot of space for your app windows, so no cursor jumps!

MikeBeaton
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