Dual Monitor on iMac Issue

[Winstonp]

Is there anyway to disable and then re-enable the external monitor (not mirrored) that is connected to my iMac? Perhaps in the terminal or simply within system prefs?


Thanks!

[mkrishnan]

I'd be happy to be corrected, but I'm pretty sure the answer is no. This comes up every once in a while. For me, for instance, it would be ace because I could leave my TV plugged into my iMac 24x7 and just "activate" it when I needed it. I can't leave it in mirroring mode because my Mac's resolution is higher than my (720p) TV's. But sadly, there does not appear to be a way to get the Mac to ignore the external display.

[Winstonp]

I'd be happy to be corrected, but I'm pretty sure the answer is no. This comes up every once in a while. For me, for instance, it would be ace because I could leave my TV plugged into my iMac 24x7 and just "activate" it when I needed it. I can't leave it in mirroring mode because my Mac's resolution is higher than my (720p) TV's. But sadly, there does not appear to be a way to get the Mac to ignore the external display.

Vista lets me do it. This is unfortunate, if true.

[Antares]

I'm wondering the same thing. I have an original Core Duo iMac which I keep plugged into my tv . However, I notice occasional video tearing which doesn't exist when I disconnect the cable to the tv. It would be nice to simply have the computer ignore the external display when I want to watch content on the iMac's screen instead of the tv. Right now, I usually just put up with the tearing.

2 GHz Core Duo
2GB Ram
X1600 256MB

[cupique]

This is an unfortunate missing feature I would also like to have again in mac os... I'm saying this because OS X 10.1 did have this feature, but it got removed when 10.2 was introduced. I was pretty upset at the time and e-mailed apple of the issue, but this hasn't been corrected to date...

[mkrishnan]

Ahh, that's interesting. I never used 10.1. So it had a "deactivate monitor" button or something like that in the system preference for displays?

[cupique]

When you had 'show displays in menu bar' activated, there was an option in the pull down menu to disable external display. It was pretty damn convenient.