So I run on 3 monitors on my Mac M1. Great setup. 2 x 4k, and a rotated 1440 x 2560. Not bad for a computer that supports 2 displays.
So what’s next for the Mac environment? Can anybody comment on it? 4 displays? I’m not clear on how all this works, but I’m thinking the Plugable unit reads the possible display output and translates it to the displays I throw at it. With the M2 chip and further chips, they have more GPU cores, so I’m thinking it’s possible they can increase the space for display real-estate.
Thank you for contacting us! I’m glad you are happy with our USB-C Triple Display Docking Station!
I cannot speak to the future of Apple Silicon (M1, M2 etc.) features and capabilities, so far Apple has released a 13-inch MacBook Pro/Air with the base-model Apple Silicon processor with support for the built-in display and one external, then about a year later released the Pro and Max processor versions in 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook computers with support for two or five external displays respectively.
This range of capabilities from relatively physically similar computers brings its own challenges and opportunities and we look forward to meeting these head on and helping to provide connectivity for these systems.
As far as specifics go, at this time our USB-C Triple Display Docking Stations are great fits for Apple Silicon systems, allowing a single USB-C port to support up to three external displays for office and light web browsing workloads, while our Thunderbolt 3 and Thunderbolt 4 docking stations can support up to two external displays ( with Pro and Max processors, only one with the base processor ) with full hardware graphics acceleration and performance.
We’re always happy to hear what you are interested in seeing in future products and what you would like to be able to do with your computer and docking station, adapters, hubs etc., development of future products should be driven by the needs of daily users like you!
Well, first, real-estate is king. I’m a developer, and I often have many apps that have many windows and tabs open. It can get rather hectic at times actually, but having yet another 4th display unit, would be great. I have two external RAID/Enclosures in series on the other USB-C port on my Mini, so the displays come from the display port on the Mini (I forget what that port is) and the Plugable on the second USB-C port on the Mini. I then plug USB stuff into the remaining ports on the Plugable.
Other than that, no current needs as it’s pretty much taken care of. I’m not a gamer, so 60 Hz on 4k makes me happy.
Four displays should be possible with your Mac Mini and UD-ULTC4K docking station.
The Mac Mini has a built-in HDMI output capable of supporting one display, and the UD-ULTC4K can support the remining three.
Two of the displays ( Mac Mini HDMI and UD-ULTC4K “Display 1” ) will be controlled by the computer’s Apple graphics controller, with two controlled by the DisplayLink USB Graphics Technology.
Additional DisplayLink USB Graphics Adapters may also be connected to the docking station, however these will share the same limited USB 3 bandwidth with the docking station’s two DisplayLink outputs and may cause reduced display performance for the DisplayLink controlled displays. This shouldn’t be a big issue if they are used for reference materials, but when the displays are actively updating they require more bandwidth and could exceed the USB bandwidth.
For example our USBC-6950U USB-C and USB 3 dual 4K display graphics adapter ( https://plugable.com/products/usbc-6950u ) may be connected to a USB port on the docking station to support up to two additional 4K 60Hz displays.
Please let me know if there is anything else I can do to help, and have a great day!
Ya getting here to this stage (remember I have one rotated display) was a bit of work. I wanted to run everything off this unit (ULTC4K) but had to use the Mini display port (HDMI?) for the main display for when I restart, etc. I need that non-rotated, and non-reliant upon the Plugable as the unit still needs to be unplugged and plugged back in again after a restart, for the unit to get the feed. A restart won’t have the unit grab the Mac’s full feed at the onset. Unfortunately, not all of this is plug and play yet.
But I was going to ask about extending the Plugable even further with a dock in series. Seems you have solved this. Interesting…
There are definitely still some growing pains with the Apple Silicon platform, but it is steadily getting better and more inline with the previous Intel platform with regard to connectivity and compatibility with external devices.
Please let me know if there is anything else I can do to help, or if you have any additional questions, and have a great day!
OK, an update. I tried putting a Samsung SyncMaster 2443BW monitor there, and it simply wouldn’t take. Wouldn’t show up in the DM nor System Preferences: Displays.
Was the Samsung SyncMaster 2443BW previously connected either to the docking station or to the MacBook?
If so, macOS may have incorrect or incompatible settings stored for this display.
For Apple Silicon systems (M1/M2 processors) Apple uses two files for storing display settings and information, sometimes the configuration files may become corrupted causing display settings to not be retained on reboot, wake from sleep, or even simply logging out and back in, and in the worst cases can cause displays to fail to detect or output correctly. It is also possible that incorrectly configured display settings can cause the window manager to crash at login bringing you back to the login prompt.
Deleting these two files will reset the window configuration for all of the connected and disconnected dislays and allow you to reconfigure the connected displays just like their first connection to the computer. The system-wide configuration file requires administrative permissions to delete or modify, while the user file can be modified by the logged in user.
How to delete these files:
Disconnect the external displays from the computer ( for Mac Mini connect one display directly to the computer’s HDMI output )
Open a terminal window: Select Finder > Go > Utilities > Terminal
Type in the following command to remove the user-specific configuration file for the currently logged in user:
3a) rm ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver.*.plist
Type in the following command to remove the system-wide configuration file (requires root/administrative permissions):
4a) sudo rm /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver.*.plist
Restart the computer: Apple Menu > Restart
Log into the user account
Reconnect the external displays and configure their resolution, position, and rotation like normal
Please let me know if this helps to enable all four connected displays.
Due to reported difficulty for some users running the DisplayLink " Reset macOS display persistence (1.2)" script I have broken it out into manual steps. In my experience most Apple silicon systems have both files, however I have had some users report that only /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver.*.plist file is found.
These two files have been identified to retain display setting data after system restart or after moving a display from an Apple Silicon controlled connection to a DisplayLink controlled connection. When moving from Apple Silicon to DisplayLink, if an incompatible setting is stored in the .plist file then the system may not correctly identify the display. For example if the display is set to 90° rotation when connected directly to the computer, and it is then connected through the DisplayLink connection which does not support the operating system’s rotation settings, then it can prevent the display from functioning until either a) the display is connected back to the Apple Silicon graphics controller and rotation is removed, or b) the .plist file is reset.
Just some more information that I thought of last night, so that you have this in your quiver in the future: I’m guessing that was a corrupted file. But, when I tried to use it before, as I had issues, it caused my computer to slow down, via a racing kernel_task. So my computer was not really functional. Moving to the smaller initial display changed that dependency. So replacing that file reset the params for this big monitor.
A bad plist file can render your computer barely operable. There it is.
As this issue has been resolved I will go ahead and close this thread.
If you have any additional questions, or if there is anything else I can do to help please feel free to start a new thread or send our support team a direct email at ‘support@plugable.com’.
