SPACES - How to 1. Use with dual monitors 2. Use in full screen videos 3. Disable it

ICEBreaker · Aug 21, 2011

Dear Lion users,

1. How to manage desktops on dual monitors independently
I never used Spaces in Leopard, so I don't know if this is a new feature or not. Anyway, in the new Lion OS, Spaces syncs each desktop across every monitor. That is, if the primary monitor shifts to desktop 2, the secondary monitor is also forced to shift to desktop 2. I can understand that some people like this feature but it makes it impossible to keep some important background applications running on a secondary monitor. Examples such as stock trading platforms, Remote Desktop Connection, Vmware Fusion, iTunes, Quicktime, MSN, Face Time, etc. come to mind. So basically, I want to keep desktop 1 running on a secondary monitor, while working on other desktops on the primary monitor.

2. Stop full screen videos from running in its own desktop
Snow Leopard used to run videos in the existing desktop even in full screen mode. This was useful because it allowed one to leave the video running in the background and work on something temporarily in the foreground, such as replying to MSN messages, or jotting down notes on Textedit. In Lion, all full screen videos run in their own desktop which cannot be shared with any other applications. This essentially makes it impossible to multitask (even for those with dual monitors - see point 1) when a full screen video is running. So basically, I want full screen videos to play the same way it did in Snow Leopard, i.e. in its own desktop.

3. Disable Spaces
Instead of complaining about Spaces, one could simply choose to disable it in Snow Leopard. I can't find the option to do this in Lion. Did I miss the option or something?

Solving ANY of the above would make the other two points unnecessary. Can anyone help? Anyone else frustrated by this? Thanks in advance for your advice.

Steve's Barber · Aug 21, 2011

The short answer is you're screwed on all 3 points.

Sorry.

robgendreau · Aug 21, 2011

Well, sorta screwed.

Many of us have complained about the new Spaces; sent a note to Apple feedback.

Meanwhile, you can display an application on every space; there's a "Assign to This Desktop" in Options in the Dock. I use it to keep some stuff on the second monitor in certain spaces. Or you can assign it to all spaces. The problem is that desktops sorta move around.

I hope Apple (or a developer) makes a utility to make this more flexible. The "full screen" feature is especially stupid.

Rob

ICEBreaker · Aug 22, 2011

That's very disappointing. It's hard to imagine why they would do something like this. While I won't go as far saying I want to reinstall Snow Leopard over this, I do feel as if Lion has really hampered my productivity. And this isn't what a good company should want to hear from their customers.

talmy · Aug 22, 2011

I'm frustrated by most of Lion's new fullscreen/spaces dual monitor fiasco. However it isn't like Lion screws you completely on this. However, do send feedback to Apple: http://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

ICEBreaker said:
1. How to manage desktops on dual monitors independently

Snow Leopard didn't do this either. Not your question, but spaces did allow moving windows between monitors which Lion doesn't allow.

2. Stop full screen videos from running in its own desktop

Two solutions here. You can either not run full screen or you can use another app to play the videos that doesn't use Lion's full screen app API. AFAIK that's every video player except Quicktime X.

3. Disable Spaces
Instead of complaining about Spaces, one could simply choose to disable it in Snow Leopard. I can't find the option to do this in Lion. Did I miss the option or something?

It doesn't need an option. There's only one space unless you add additional spaces, so it is off by default. You will need to click the box so that Dashboard is overlaid rather than in it's own space, like it was in Snow Leopard. And, of course, don't run anything full screen since that will temporarily create a space for it.

ICEBreaker · Aug 24, 2011

Hi Talmy, thank you for your reply. I suppose I could use VLC then instead of Quicktime. Cool! As for disabling Spaces, I see your point. I was just hoping that if I "disabled" Spaces, then QT fullscreen videos wouldn't create a new desktop.

Well, I think I can consider this problem "solved". Simply not use Spaces, and to use VLC instead of Quicktime. I am off to download VLC then.

mrblack927 · Sep 6, 2011

robgendreau said:
Meanwhile, you can display an application on every space; there's a "Assign to This Desktop" in Options… in the Dock. I use it to keep some stuff on the second monitor in certain spaces. Or you can assign it to all spaces.

I did this in Snow Leopard and it worked great. The problem I'm having in Lion is that when you switch spaces, the window disappears temporarily and then reappears moments later in the new space. It's really annoying. In SL the applications just "stuck" to the screen and never moved at all. Anyone found a way to restore that functionality?

QuarterSwede · Sep 6, 2011

This thread is a great explanation for those who love Mission Control and don't understand why I say it's a half baked implementation of Spaces & Exposé.

To make it actually useful Apple needs to:
1. Add true dual monitor support
2. Allow Desktops to be reorganized by the user
3. Not MC specifically but stop crashed applications from taking focus when relaunching using the crash dialog box (ignore, report or relaunch). That drives me absolutely freaking crazy.

srf4real · Sep 6, 2011

QuarterSwede said:
This thread is a great explanation for those who love Mission Control and don't understand why I say it's a half baked implementation of Spaces & Exposé.

To make it actually useful Apple needs to:
1. Add true dual monitor support
2. Allow Desktops to be reorganized by the user
3. Not MC specifically but stop crashed applications from taking focus when relaunching using the crash dialog box (ignore, report or relaunch). That drives me absolutely freaking crazy.

Preaching to the choir, brother! Of all the ridiculous things to implement in a current operating system, when today's workstation is commonly equipped with dual screens precisely to allow greater productivity- cripple one under full screen ?????????

I don't think Apple thought Lion out very well, they just wanted to wow the iOS crowd with eye candy..

hayesk · Sep 6, 2011

To turn off spaces in Lion, just don't make any spaces - why does it need a switch?

I use multiple monitors so I understand that full screen is useless with multiple monitors, but SL didn't even have this feature, so it's not worse - it's just not finished.

Nelchael · Sep 7, 2011

For the record, VLC was updated about a month ago... to take advantage of the new full screen API. You can disable this by going to Preferences - Video - uncheck "black screens in fullscreen mode".

If you don't see the option, make sure you're running the latest VLC, then head into preferences, switch from "Basic" to "All", Interface - Main Interfaces - macosx - uncheck "black screens in fullscreen mode".

This is _still_ worse than pre-update, though, because working actively in the secondary monitor will bring up menu bar and dock above your VLC video window in the primary monitor... in other words, normal fullscreen mode only works in secondary monitors (that don't have dock/menu).

ICEBreaker said:
Hi Talmy, thank you for your reply. I suppose I could use VLC then instead of Quicktime. Cool! As for disabling Spaces, I see your point. I was just hoping that if I "disabled" Spaces, then QT fullscreen videos wouldn't create a new desktop.

Well, I think I can consider this problem "solved". Simply not use Spaces, and to use VLC instead of Quicktime. I am off to download VLC then.

blackomega31 · Sep 7, 2011

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_5 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8L1 Safari/6533.18.5)

I have a simple solution for all of you. Upgrade your computer to snow leopard and forget that lion ever existed. The world will be a better place once lion is purged from all macs

talmy · Sep 7, 2011

hayesk said:
I use multiple monitors so I understand that full screen is useless with multiple monitors, but SL didn't even have this feature, so it's not worse - it's just not finished.

It is worse. There have always been full screen applications, even from Apple (thinking here of Aperture, recent iLife and iWorks). Lion is just the first to have it integrated with its Spaces/Mission Control feature in that full screen creates a new space. The problem is with apps that have had full screen before but have now switched to Lion's API. Aperture's full screen takes several times longer to enter and leave (and is ugly doing so) and while it has always been able to use multiple monitors it now doesn't allow using additional monitors for other than Aperture. Only solution is not to have performed the recent Aperture upgrade.

The new Parallels 7 has many irate posts to their forum because it adopted the new Lion full screen. Many people, myself included, use Parallels in full screen mode on the secondary monitor. It's no longer possible, and they have promised in the next revision to restore the old functionality. I, for one, won't upgrade until they do. For similar reasons I hope Microsoft Remote Desktop doesn't follow suit in using Lion's full screen.

blackomega31 said:
I have a simple solution for all of you. Upgrade your computer to snow leopard and forget that lion ever existed. The world will be a better place once lion is purged from all macs

Not a solution -- there are many nice features of Lion that I don't want to give up just for good multi-monitor support. May take a while, but I'm sure Apple will fix this up like they have with major goofs in the past. Just let them know with feedback that you are not satisfied. I've done so for Lion and Aperture as well as reporting other bugs I've found. I've done upgrades to Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard, and now Lion, and this was not the worst -- going to Leopard caused severe LAN problems that I had to back off and Snow Leopard killed the most applications I was using.

KnightWRX · Sep 7, 2011

talmy said:
Snow Leopard didn't do this either. Not your question, but spaces did allow moving windows between monitors which Lion doesn't allow.

Uh ? Lion allows me to move Windows between monitors, what are you talking about ? Basically, Spaces works the same as it did before, except for Full screen apps. Same with dual monitor support. Apple didn't break anything, they just forgot about it when implementing the full screen stuff.

Solution : Don't use fullscreen apps.

Doe1 · Dec 15, 2011

Hey ppl,

I am using Snow Leopard 10.6.8 . I have recently got an external monitor LG E2251VR.

I had the same fullscreen mode problem as you but interestingly I am not using lion. When one monitor is in fullscreen mode and the other monitor is not usable.

In flash videos, like youtube, the content of the other monitor is visible and as soon as I click it the other one exits the fullscreen mode.

In VLC, the other screen is blacked out and again when i click it exits the full screen mode.

The interesting thing is that, people on the forum say that they did not have this problem with snow leopard and started to have it with lion. I am still using snow leopard and don't get why i have this problem.

I am wondering if there is a solution for this problem in snow leopard. Quick replies will strongly be appreciated.

Thanks very much,
D

WSR · Dec 15, 2011

Doe1 said:
Hey ppl,

I am using Snow Leopard 10.6.8 . I have recently got an external monitor LG E2251VR.

I had the same fullscreen mode problem as you but interestingly I am not using lion. When one monitor is in fullscreen mode and the other monitor is not usable.

In flash videos, like youtube, the content of the other monitor is visible and as soon as I click it the other one exits the fullscreen mode.

In VLC, the other screen is blacked out and again when i click it exits the full screen mode.

The interesting thing is that, people on the forum say that they did not have this problem with snow leopard and started to have it with lion. I am still using snow leopard and don't get why i have this problem.

I am wondering if there is a solution for this problem in snow leopard. Quick replies will strongly be appreciated.

Thanks very much,
D

In Snow Leopard Full-screen mode is very app dependent.

Itunes: blanks 2nd monitor.

Sarfari-youtube: doesn't blank 2nd monitor, but any selection of another app, even the desktop, will take youtube out of Full-screen mode.

Quicktime & MPlayer: app can be put into Full-screen mode and you can work with other apps without it leaving Full-screen mode. ( I thought I use to be able to do this with VLC. So you might check the preferences to see if there is an option to blank or not blank other monitor. )

Doe1 · Dec 15, 2011

Thanks very much for the information WSR. I just cannot believe that apple did this, and they did not fix it in lion.

People talk about going back to snow leopard from lion because of this issue. I thought snow leopard was ok..

billpennock · Apr 11, 2012

I'm really glad I found this thread

I have not updated to Lion since Snow Leopard is working fine for me. But there is always the thought in the back of my mind that I might someday take the plunge. Now I know I will absolutely not and will probably not buy a new MAC till they give back spaces like it was in Snow Leopard. I use it every day, all day, it is a MASSIVE help in my productivity and to loose it would be as catastrophic as a computer feature thing can be. Which compared to war, pestilence and disease isn't all that bad but still. Just Say No to Lion

matrix07 · Apr 11, 2012

ICEBreaker said:
2. Stop full screen videos from running in its own desktop
..This was useful because it allowed one to leave the video running in the background and work on something temporarily in the foreground, such as replying to MSN messages, or jotting down notes on Textedit..

This I find I don't have problem with it at all. I just use multi-fingers swipe back and forth between multitask and watching video. I find full screen behavior in app like VLC a bit annoying since it hid everything behind.

MacMass · Nov 27, 2012

Common guys, nobody made a tweak for that? I don't belefe anymore that :apple:

will make OS X to a open and working system again. It's all pointing in direction to the iOS. That's a shame. So it's on us to keep it alive.

SPACES - How to 1. Use with dual monitors 2. Use in full screen videos 3. Disable it

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