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We are getting used to working from home, but extra space is not a luxury. With this trick, you can connect a monitor to your laptop.
By Erik NusselderSitting hunched over in front of your laptop isn’t so good for your back and neck. If you work a lot at home and only have a laptop at your disposal, it is advisable to connect a monitor to it and sit behind a desk.
The biggest problem with connecting a monitor is finding the right cables. Especially if you have an older laptop, this can be a problem. Older connections in order of poor quality to better: VGA, DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort.
It is important to look at the weakest link. For example, if your laptop only has a VGA connection, it will determine the signal strength whether or not your monitor has a better connection. Find cables that match or possibly purchase an adapter that goes from one cable to the other.
USB-C becomes the new standard
A different story applies to new gear. Modern laptops are getting thinner and lighter and have as few ports as possible. HDMI ports are almost no longer installed, because we are moving to a new standard: USB-C connectivity.
You probably already know this for charging your laptop or phone, but the latest generation can do so much more. Nowadays, USB-C can also transfer image and sound, so in the future you will only need one type of cable.
If you buy a new monitor now, you can also opt for one with such a port. Then just plug the USB-C cable into your laptop and monitor. Whether your laptop’s USB-C port can handle this is unfortunately not visible from the outside. You should try it or check your device specs. If your monitor is not yet ready for this, you should also purchase a USB-C to, for example, HDMI adapter.
Configure everything correctly on your laptop
If you have connected the appropriate cables, you still need to configure the display. Your laptop doesn’t automatically know what to do with that extra monitor. For that, you need to dive into your laptop’s display settings. On Windows laptops, pressing Windows key + P opens a context menu to control this.
With ‘Extend’, the monitor becomes a sort of extension of your laptop. You can then place the two screens side by side and move the mouse between them. If you want to completely replace your laptop with your monitor, choose ‘Duplicate’ or ‘Only second screen’. With the second option, you can now shut down your laptop and continue working on your screen.
A Mac is a bit better at automatically recognizing a new monitor. On newer laptops, you can probably get started right away if you have the display attached.
If you want to define exactly what the monitor is for, go to “System Preferences” and open the “Display” menu. Here you can determine the position of your monitors in a kind of puzzle.
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