“You don’t even get told what each resolution is–not at all helpful, but very‘Apple’”

I’ve received a number of cries for help from readers over the past few months of people working at home, so for this column I’ve picked out a few because they have a common theme of trying to use a Mac productively as part of a home office setup. Let’s run through them in no particular order. The first is from Jo:

“I’ve bought a lovely monitor that plugs into my MacBook Pro. It works well, and I like how macOS supports multiple monitors – I prefer it to my employer-provided Windows setup back at the office. However, I have the new monitor sitting above the laptop screen and I’ve used the desktop arrangement tools to position things as best I can, but I can’t get the scaling to match. When I move stuff between screens they shrink and expand, and the mouse pointer doesn’t move smoothly from one screen to another. Is there a way to fix this?”

I know exactly what Jo means, and the problem is that, by default, macOS doesn’t offer many desktop scaling options. In fact, you get a choice of just five, with names such as “More Space” and “Larger text”. You don’t even get told what each resolution is – not at all helpful, but very “Apple”.

With just five options, the chances of finding one for the external monitor that exactly matches how you have the laptop set up are very slim