Darn. I went by your experience and didn’t get it. Should’ve gotten it when it was on sale then. Anyone have a coupon code?
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Luna Display Gains PC-to-Mac Mode, 5K Support and More
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Darn. I went by your experience and didn’t get it. Should’ve gotten it when it was on sale then. Anyone have a coupon code?
I’ve tried with the revised manual debug mode setting and I’m not sure how I feel. It’s better than my video on the default setting but if you’re going to be doing a lot of motion stuff? It’s not quite 60fps and can still get a bit blocky. Using a cable makes it a bit better…If you’d like I can record a new video next week at the office.
Thank you, please do. I’m just sad I missed the sale. It was $70 during Black Friday. I’d pay $70 bucks for an occasional use of my old iMac as a display for my MacBookPro M1 Max until the iMac Pro and Universal Control come out next year but I won’t pay the full $125 price for it. Maybe another sale will come around.
If you can, please also record a video using the suggested settings below by @snyp1193. Really does sound like a good balance between FPS & IQ.
It may not be 60fps depending on your GPU and how well it processes the display but it should be smoother than the 5K setting (at least for me it is).
I tested this for a while today, primarily comparing it to JumpDesktop.
I’ve got a Retina iMac with attached Thunderbolt Display and an M1 Mac Mini which is temporarily intended to be the primary Mac for some applications until the MBP arrives.
LunaDisplay visual quality on my Retina iMac is so much better than JumpDesktop - I don’t think I can not use it.
There are downsides though, the 2nd monitor attached to the iMac is not useable when using Luna Display, whereas with Jump Desktop I can have a dual monitor setup (2 iMac displays and 2 Mini displays with 3-finger swiping between Macs).
I did try the settings suggested here but I ended going back to the auto settings with 5K as I found no issue with it for my purposes - I do use the Macs connected via Ethernet not wifi.
Therefore I suspect when my new MBP arrives I will use the MBP as the central/main Mac with the external monitor connected to it directly and the iMac used as a Retina display via Luna Display. The shortage of ports on the M1 Mini is a bit limiting so am looking forward to the extras on the MBP. I’ll likely end up upgrading the Thunderbolt Display at some point.
I also tried a few options for connecting my iPad Pro as another display at the same time - I found Sidecar to be the best option for me - especially with ZBrush. I couldn’t get Easy Canvas working correctly when connected via Luna Display and when using Jump Desktop I found the screen aspect ratio too “off” compared to using the native “move window to iPad Pro”. It may be that Easy Canvas is better than SideCar for a few things such as pressure curves and touch gestures - but the combination of the aspect ratio weirdness and losing Retina display on iMac when using JumpDesktop pushed me to SideCar. I do have my physical keyboard in front of the iPad so keyboard shortcuts are not a concern - I would prefer if the Magic Keyboard worked more fully though. I’m tempted to try Astropad in case it is even better but I can’t see what it would give me for ZBrush that I don’t have with Sidecar.
Someone said VNC didn’t work with Luna Display (and I think I’ve been guilty of repeating that) but today I had no issues to that effect - at one point I had both working at the same time - I had them connected with Jump Desktop and also had the iMac connected via Luna Display at the same time. So I could have the iMac displaying the M1 Mini in Retina mode and when I wanted to use the 2nd monitor I could quit Luna and use the M1 Mini dual displays and then launch Luna to go back to single M1 Mini display on the Retina iMac.
I’ve got a Retina iMac with attached Thunderbolt Display and an M1 Mac Mini which is temporarily intended to be the primary Mac for some applications until the MBP arrives.
LunaDisplay visual quality on my Retina iMac is so much better than JumpDesktop - I don’t think I can not use it.
There are downsides though, the 2nd monitor attached to the iMac is not useable when using Luna Display, whereas with Jump Desktop I can have a dual monitor setup (2 iMac displays and 2 Mini displays with 3-finger swiping between Macs).
I did try the settings suggested here but I ended going back to the auto settings with 5K as I found no issue with it for my purposes - I do use the Macs connected via Ethernet not wifi.
Therefore I suspect when my new MBP arrives I will use the MBP as the central/main Mac with the external monitor connected to it directly and the iMac used as a Retina display via Luna Display. The shortage of ports on the M1 Mini is a bit limiting so am looking forward to the extras on the MBP. I’ll likely end up upgrading the Thunderbolt Display at some point.
I also tried a few options for connecting my iPad Pro as another display at the same time - I found Sidecar to be the best option for me - especially with ZBrush. I couldn’t get Easy Canvas working correctly when connected via Luna Display and when using Jump Desktop I found the screen aspect ratio too “off” compared to using the native “move window to iPad Pro”. It may be that Easy Canvas is better than SideCar for a few things such as pressure curves and touch gestures - but the combination of the aspect ratio weirdness and losing Retina display on iMac when using JumpDesktop pushed me to SideCar. I do have my physical keyboard in front of the iPad so keyboard shortcuts are not a concern - I would prefer if the Magic Keyboard worked more fully though. I’m tempted to try Astropad in case it is even better but I can’t see what it would give me for ZBrush that I don’t have with Sidecar.
Someone said VNC didn’t work with Luna Display (and I think I’ve been guilty of repeating that) but today I had no issues to that effect - at one point I had both working at the same time - I had them connected with Jump Desktop and also had the iMac connected via Luna Display at the same time. So I could have the iMac displaying the M1 Mini in Retina mode and when I wanted to use the 2nd monitor I could quit Luna and use the M1 Mini dual displays and then launch Luna to go back to single M1 Mini display on the Retina iMac.
Posting late to the thread but others interested in the product might find themselves here anyway on a search so here's to you. ? I was put off from buying during the discounted period by some of the earlier posts in this thread, but eventually went ahead even though it was at full price. You see, it's my curse: Nothing is ever on a sale when I've decided I actually want it. (aka: won't be rushed into a too-quick decision by a short-term discount)
TL;DR: It's brilliant. Better than expected, and WHEN ? the new Apple monitors come next year the decision to get one is just a little bit harder. (But I will; but it looks like I'll have had a year of use out of this by then.)
My use case is, a 2021 MacBook Pro (M1Pro) as the primary, a 2019 iMac Retina 5K as the secondary. I'm a programmer, and most else I do is also mostly text-based, so what I'm looking for is super sharp text, and relative slowness of the display is of less importance. I just really really wanted the 5K. I have an older 4K monitor, but the 5K on the iMac spoiled me.
I did find on a wifi connection it was on the sluggish side; latency was too high, and quite a lot of pixellation. I expected that, and always expected to use a wired connection.
With a thunderbolt 3 cable directly connecting the two machines things were much better, and for my purposes entirely usable. I basically don't see any pixellation or other compression artefacts. All I see is that the refresh rate seems a little low. It's probably at the 45fps point, I'm guessing. (It doesn't definitively tell me, and I tell it manually it can go up to 60Hz, but that's what it feels like. Just a little less smooth than the 60Hz display next to it.) This is acceptable for my use case. Dragging windows, scrolling windows, using the trackpad is still responsive enough, and that's what I wasn't really expecting to be the case, so it's a bonus as far as I'm concerned.
I'm also trying using a Thunderbolt 3 dock (Caldigit TS3), with the Luna Display dongle connected to the onward-facing thunderbolt port on the dock, and a real 4K monitor connected to the dock's DisplayPort, and using an ethernet connection from the dock, via a nearby switching hub (into which the iMac is also connected). I needed to opt-open prefs and set a connectivity rate to manual and drag it all the way to maximum (40MB/s / 320Mbps) and this... seems to work as well as the direct thunderbolt connection did; although as noted, I am pushing it to prioritise the traffic, whereas the thunderbolt connection was fast enough without changing any defaults. In further use I may yet find that the ethernet gets more contention than the direct thunderbolt would, but that's not been an issue yet.
Videos are watchable, but don't really keep up in full screen, so frames get dropped. That was expected, and not important to me. (I can play those on the real 4K monitor attached.)
It comes with a bandwidth meter (selectable from the app main menu), shown below just after I'd been scribble-dragging this browser window around on the Luna Display. (The meter window is on the internal screen so it doesn't itself take up bandwidth.) 320Mbps seems to be a hard upper limit on the bandwidth it'll take on any interface, but it also seems sufficient. (I wonder if you could use more to get 60Hz on a 5K screen, you'd get diminishing returns as it would use up more computing resources on both ends, to capture, encode, decode, display that, to the point of possibly sacrificing performance in other respects.)
Wants:
I wish it also provided an audio output on the DisplayPort, so it could pass that through to be played out of the selected audio output on the secondary.
Given my secondary is an iMac that isn't that old or that much of a slouch, yet, and is also the place where I run apps that aren't Apple Silicon capable yet (I refuse to install Rosetta 2, more than a year into transition), it would also be nice if you could switch easily and quickly between it being a Luna Display and showing its own desktop; ideally as if Luna Display was just running in its own space ("as if" in user interface/control terms, I'm pretty sure it's driving the screen more directly than that). You can switch in the sense of just turning Luna Display *off* (quitting the app), but sometimes I'd just like to cmd-tab to another iMac app or mission control to its main desktop using its own keyboard & trackpad, and then switch right back.
Summary: Totally worth the full price, being able to use the Retina 5K screen on my shiny new MacBook Pro is a balm to my tired eyes. It definitely looks like this will do me until those new Apple monitors arrive. ?
TL;DR: It's brilliant. Better than expected, and WHEN ? the new Apple monitors come next year the decision to get one is just a little bit harder. (But I will; but it looks like I'll have had a year of use out of this by then.)
My use case is, a 2021 MacBook Pro (M1Pro) as the primary, a 2019 iMac Retina 5K as the secondary. I'm a programmer, and most else I do is also mostly text-based, so what I'm looking for is super sharp text, and relative slowness of the display is of less importance. I just really really wanted the 5K. I have an older 4K monitor, but the 5K on the iMac spoiled me.
I did find on a wifi connection it was on the sluggish side; latency was too high, and quite a lot of pixellation. I expected that, and always expected to use a wired connection.
With a thunderbolt 3 cable directly connecting the two machines things were much better, and for my purposes entirely usable. I basically don't see any pixellation or other compression artefacts. All I see is that the refresh rate seems a little low. It's probably at the 45fps point, I'm guessing. (It doesn't definitively tell me, and I tell it manually it can go up to 60Hz, but that's what it feels like. Just a little less smooth than the 60Hz display next to it.) This is acceptable for my use case. Dragging windows, scrolling windows, using the trackpad is still responsive enough, and that's what I wasn't really expecting to be the case, so it's a bonus as far as I'm concerned.
I'm also trying using a Thunderbolt 3 dock (Caldigit TS3), with the Luna Display dongle connected to the onward-facing thunderbolt port on the dock, and a real 4K monitor connected to the dock's DisplayPort, and using an ethernet connection from the dock, via a nearby switching hub (into which the iMac is also connected). I needed to opt-open prefs and set a connectivity rate to manual and drag it all the way to maximum (40MB/s / 320Mbps) and this... seems to work as well as the direct thunderbolt connection did; although as noted, I am pushing it to prioritise the traffic, whereas the thunderbolt connection was fast enough without changing any defaults. In further use I may yet find that the ethernet gets more contention than the direct thunderbolt would, but that's not been an issue yet.
Videos are watchable, but don't really keep up in full screen, so frames get dropped. That was expected, and not important to me. (I can play those on the real 4K monitor attached.)
It comes with a bandwidth meter (selectable from the app main menu), shown below just after I'd been scribble-dragging this browser window around on the Luna Display. (The meter window is on the internal screen so it doesn't itself take up bandwidth.) 320Mbps seems to be a hard upper limit on the bandwidth it'll take on any interface, but it also seems sufficient. (I wonder if you could use more to get 60Hz on a 5K screen, you'd get diminishing returns as it would use up more computing resources on both ends, to capture, encode, decode, display that, to the point of possibly sacrificing performance in other respects.)
Wants:
I wish it also provided an audio output on the DisplayPort, so it could pass that through to be played out of the selected audio output on the secondary.
Given my secondary is an iMac that isn't that old or that much of a slouch, yet, and is also the place where I run apps that aren't Apple Silicon capable yet (I refuse to install Rosetta 2, more than a year into transition), it would also be nice if you could switch easily and quickly between it being a Luna Display and showing its own desktop; ideally as if Luna Display was just running in its own space ("as if" in user interface/control terms, I'm pretty sure it's driving the screen more directly than that). You can switch in the sense of just turning Luna Display *off* (quitting the app), but sometimes I'd just like to cmd-tab to another iMac app or mission control to its main desktop using its own keyboard & trackpad, and then switch right back.
Summary: Totally worth the full price, being able to use the Retina 5K screen on my shiny new MacBook Pro is a balm to my tired eyes. It definitely looks like this will do me until those new Apple monitors arrive. ?
Thanks for the details, @StrangeNoises! You've described exactly my use case, right down to the Caldigit TS3 dock and additional 4K display (I'm using an LG 27" HDR 4K). Based on your info and others in this thread, I'm definitely getting Luna Display.
I just want to give an update on my recent experience with Luna Display. The current software version is 5.1.3 and this version introduced some fixes and new features.
Firstly, Luna Display no longer impacts on the Thunderbolt Display attached to my iMac - which is great as now I can if I want to also use Jump Desktop at the same time for a dual monitor setup from my M1 Mac Mini. This works great.
Secondly, and even better in my opinion, it is now possible to run Luna with the ability to easily switch between Mini and iMac desktops - effectively putting the Luna Display into a Space. (This is a new preference option in Luna Secondary when Luna Primary isn't running).
So my iMac 5k is running in the background, I can run Luna to show my Mac Mini desktop, and I can 3-finger swipe on my trackpad to switch between the iMac desktop and the Mini desktop. At the same time I can use Jump Desktop to display a second desktop from my Mac Mini and also 3-finger swipe between that and a second iMac desktop. On top of this I can use my iPad Pro as a 3rd display from the M1 Mac Mini via sidecar for example for ZBrush modelling with my Apple Pencil!
It's actually quite brilliant!
@StrangeNoises and @ader42 thanks so much for all the info. I've been craving a MBP to replace my late 2014 5k iMac, but absolutely positively want/need large, retina-quality screen real estate. The XDR is out of the question for me, so until Apple releases new monitors, sounds like Luna will do the trick for me. A few questions.
I've seen TB3 connections referenced. My iMac is TB2. Would that work? And is there any difference between a TB connection and Ethernet connection? I can't find an answer to that on the Luna site. If one is superior I'd of course want to go that route.
Also, regarding the new feature of Luna running in its own Space, that is AWESOME. I want to make sure I understand the way it works. Is the trackpad that you swipe to reveal the iMac desktop the trackpad on your MBP or an external trackpad? If external, is it BT connected to the MBP or the iMac?
I ask because I only have 1 external keyboard and trackpad and would want to BT them to my MBP to use it (and the iMac as an external display with Luna) 9x% of the time. But if/when I swipe to reveal the iMac desktop, what controls the iMac at that point?
Thanks!
My iMac is Thunderbolt 2. I currently have the Thunderbolt Display attached to the iMac via Thunderbolt 2 and the Luna Primary M1 Mac attached to the iMac via ethernet. Thunderbolt 2 should be faster - I haven't tried it to compare due to lack of Thunderbolt ports on the M1 Macs - but either should work.
Yes my iMac has the smaller Apple keyboard with the Apple trackpad and Apple mouse next to it. All 3 are connected to the iMac via bluetooth.
I don't use a MBP (yet) my M1 Mac is a mini. When the Mini is displayed on the iMac the keyboard, mouse and trackpad control the Mini. When I swipe back to the iMac the same keyboard, mouse and trackpad now control the iMac. Automagically.
I have a larger (and older) usb Apple keyboard and mouse that I keep nearby to plug into the M1 Mac - but very rarely need them (only when changing connections etc around). You shouldn't need this as a MBP will obviously have a keyboard and trackpad built in.
Yes my iMac has the smaller Apple keyboard with the Apple trackpad and Apple mouse next to it. All 3 are connected to the iMac via bluetooth.
I don't use a MBP (yet) my M1 Mac is a mini. When the Mini is displayed on the iMac the keyboard, mouse and trackpad control the Mini. When I swipe back to the iMac the same keyboard, mouse and trackpad now control the iMac. Automagically.
I have a larger (and older) usb Apple keyboard and mouse that I keep nearby to plug into the M1 Mac - but very rarely need them (only when changing connections etc around). You shouldn't need this as a MBP will obviously have a keyboard and trackpad built in.
Wow that's really amazing about the way the KB and trackpad tie into whichever computer is actually on the screen. Wouldn't have expected that to be the case. Makes me lean that much harder toward this solution, thanks!
Also, re: TB vs ethernet. I believe you, but is there anything from Luna about this, or tests you've seen comparing? Thinking that with the 5k resolution being the must-have thing, that eking out every last bit of performance would be worthwhile. I guess I could experiment with both when the time comes.
I don’t recall seeing any comparisons between ethernet and thunderbolt but I think it tops out at 45Hz for 5K so you wouldn’t want to use it for gaming.
Yup definitely noted this. Not a gamer so shouldn't be an issue. Still interested to see what 45Hz feels like day to day...
You'll want to use Thunderbolt. From my limited testing with ethernet it wasn't worth the performance drop.
I'm using ethernet between by late 2014 iMac 5k and my new MacBook Pro 14 inch... the quality is pretty good... but a little choppy... If I was to use Thunderbolt, would this make it quicker than ethernet?
I don't own any thunderbolt cables... I'm assuming I need a Thunderbolt 2 to 3 adaptor, and then a thunderbolt 3 cable? My new MacBook Pro has thunderbolt 4, but I'm assuming that Thunderbolt 3 is fine as the thunderbolt 2 speed would dictate the maximum speed anyway?
Thanks!
I don't own any thunderbolt cables... I'm assuming I need a Thunderbolt 2 to 3 adaptor, and then a thunderbolt 3 cable? My new MacBook Pro has thunderbolt 4, but I'm assuming that Thunderbolt 3 is fine as the thunderbolt 2 speed would dictate the maximum speed anyway?
Thanks!
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What latency are you getting?
(found under the Vitals display)
On Wifi I average around 30ms but with ethernet and thunderbolt2 I get around 0.5 ms.
I don’t really see the difference between ethernet & thunderbolt but that could be my 2014 iMac gfx card (AMD Radeon R9 M295x 4GB) or the fact that my M1 Mini is the cheapest one going (I bought it to test with) - so when my MBP arrives it might be better.
It’s more than useable for me though as it is.
(found under the Vitals display)
On Wifi I average around 30ms but with ethernet and thunderbolt2 I get around 0.5 ms.
I don’t really see the difference between ethernet & thunderbolt but that could be my 2014 iMac gfx card (AMD Radeon R9 M295x 4GB) or the fact that my M1 Mini is the cheapest one going (I bought it to test with) - so when my MBP arrives it might be better.
It’s more than useable for me though as it is.
I just want to give you all a heads up on a serious bug I just found in Luna Display.
It relates to the new non “fullscreen” option previously discussed that allows one to switch spaces to the host desktop (in my case the iMac). This option has to be engaged so if you don’t turn off the “fullscreen” option which is on by default you won’t encounter this bug as far as I can tell. Also, I think this bug might only get triggered if you use a trackpad to switch “Spaces” - if you use Command Tab to switch apps I think that works around the bug.
So, what is the bug… well it seems that if I 3-finger swipe between the iMac desktop and the remote Mini desktop the keyboard commands get sent to both Macs! So, I open TextEdit and create a new document then launch Luna (show the Mini on my iMac), then open Notes and create a new empty note. I then 3-finger swipe back to my iMac desktop space and type “123456” into the TextEdit document, then 3-finer swipe back to the Mini - I can see that the previously empty note now has “123456” typed in it.
At first thought this doesn’t sound too serious, but today when I encountered this it had resulted in drives, folders and files on my Mini having their names changed to things I’d typed on google search on the iMac. Even worse, it had resulted in files been put in the wastebasket and then the wastebasket being emptied. Yes, I lost files.
I strongly suspect that this scenario of 3-finger swiping betweeen spaces hasn’t been tested by Luna before shipping.
I have emailed Luna support to report the issue.
It relates to the new non “fullscreen” option previously discussed that allows one to switch spaces to the host desktop (in my case the iMac). This option has to be engaged so if you don’t turn off the “fullscreen” option which is on by default you won’t encounter this bug as far as I can tell. Also, I think this bug might only get triggered if you use a trackpad to switch “Spaces” - if you use Command Tab to switch apps I think that works around the bug.
So, what is the bug… well it seems that if I 3-finger swipe between the iMac desktop and the remote Mini desktop the keyboard commands get sent to both Macs! So, I open TextEdit and create a new document then launch Luna (show the Mini on my iMac), then open Notes and create a new empty note. I then 3-finger swipe back to my iMac desktop space and type “123456” into the TextEdit document, then 3-finer swipe back to the Mini - I can see that the previously empty note now has “123456” typed in it.
At first thought this doesn’t sound too serious, but today when I encountered this it had resulted in drives, folders and files on my Mini having their names changed to things I’d typed on google search on the iMac. Even worse, it had resulted in files been put in the wastebasket and then the wastebasket being emptied. Yes, I lost files.
I strongly suspect that this scenario of 3-finger swiping betweeen spaces hasn’t been tested by Luna before shipping.
I have emailed Luna support to report the issue.
A further update. Luna told they had discovered this too and are working on a fix.
I started wondering if I could improve performance, so I’ve just tried a few things.
First the ethernet cable I was using I’ve had for a few years, it came with an old router so I wasn’t sure how up to date it was. So I ordered a new Cat8 cable from Amazon. That didn’t improve anything so I assume we don’t need really high bandwidth.
Now, I am awaiting a new MBP, which doesn’t have an ethernet port, but I do already have a Caldigit Element hub so assumed/hoped I could use that. I bought an Anker usb-c to ethernet adaptor - but Luna does not recognise this connection as a direct connection which makes performance fall through the floor. Big sulk. I wondered if it was the hub and so tried plugging the adaptor into the M1 Mini thunderbolt port but still got the same poor result. So maybe it is the Anker adaptor I got that is not working?
So… @mimeArtist can you tell me how you get ethernet on your MBP?
I started wondering if I could improve performance, so I’ve just tried a few things.
First the ethernet cable I was using I’ve had for a few years, it came with an old router so I wasn’t sure how up to date it was. So I ordered a new Cat8 cable from Amazon. That didn’t improve anything so I assume we don’t need really high bandwidth.
Now, I am awaiting a new MBP, which doesn’t have an ethernet port, but I do already have a Caldigit Element hub so assumed/hoped I could use that. I bought an Anker usb-c to ethernet adaptor - but Luna does not recognise this connection as a direct connection which makes performance fall through the floor. Big sulk. I wondered if it was the hub and so tried plugging the adaptor into the M1 Mini thunderbolt port but still got the same poor result. So maybe it is the Anker adaptor I got that is not working?
So… @mimeArtist can you tell me how you get ethernet on your MBP?
Just to add, my rationale for using ethernet is to free up a thunderbolt port on the iMac seeing as I can’t see a performance benefit.
I also just thought to try thunderbolt via the hub and that worked fine with the Apple thunderbolt adaptor so I guess I’ll forego the Anker adaptor for a thunderbolt connection anyway.
I do have some USB-A 3.2 to USB-C adaptors on the way so I might be able to make use of one of the USB-A ports on the hub for Luna - we will see.
I also just thought to try thunderbolt via the hub and that worked fine with the Apple thunderbolt adaptor so I guess I’ll forego the Anker adaptor for a thunderbolt connection anyway.
I do have some USB-A 3.2 to USB-C adaptors on the way so I might be able to make use of one of the USB-A ports on the hub for Luna - we will see.
Thanks for the info... I've ordered a thunderbolt 2 cable, and a thunderbolt 2 to 3 adapter which should arrive tomorrow to connect my MacBook Pro to my late 2014 iMac — Will let you know how I get on in comparison with the ethernet way.
My ethernet runs from an ethernet adaptor to usb-c cable. Your luna has to plug directly into a port apparently for speed.
That sounds like my Anker adaptor which gives me poor performance on the Mini and on the Hub. Yeah I have the Luna plugged directly into a port on the Mini.
When you connect via your adaptor does Luna Primary (on the MBP) state that it is using an Ethernet connection? For me it doesn’t unless I use ethernet to ethernet without an adaptor.
I've got it set to only use ethernet just so I know it's only me I'm broadcasting to... it shows it up on the display as attached. Also I set it like that so I know it's going the best way it can and not defaulting to wifi. All very confusing!
