My setup with 4 screens and 2 Macs
Recently, a MacBookPro and a Mac Mini, both are M4 Pro, have become my primary productivity tools. Along with them, I have 3 monitors, plus the one comes with MacBookPro, counts as 4 screens in total. On top of that, I have the logi MX Keys keyboard and MX Master 3S suite, and an Apple Magic Trackpad.
It turns out that I need to come up with a productive setup for them.
TL;DR as an ASCII art
+---------+
| |
+-----------------+ +-----------------+ | Tall |
| Reference | | Primary | | |
| Display | | Display | | Display |
+-----------------+ +-----------------+ | |
| |
+------+ +------------+ +---------+
| Mini | | MBP |
+------+ +------------+
| [Keyboard] |
| [Pad] |
+------------+
[ MX Keys ] [MX 3S]
[Pad]
Screen arrangement
Above the screen of MacBookPro, I have my primary display, which serves as the main workspace for coding, browsing etc. The second display is placed on its left, on the same height, hosting stuff for reference. Both are horizontal and wide.
The third display (I would like to call it the "tall display") is placed on the right, yet vertically, with its middle part aligned with the primary display, it might host IM, PDFs, AI assistants, or any stuff that are tall, including vertically stacked windows that requires less width.
Mac-display correspondence
Mac Mini is placed under the second display, and it's connected to the first 2 displays, and all of them if desired.
MacBookPro is connected to the tall display, and optionally also to the primary display.
Keyboard and mouse
I could just use the keyboard and trackpad of MacBookPro, and they can travel to the nearby Mac Mini.
As I have muscle memory that's already used to MacBookPro's keyboard, MX Keys would be a good fit, as the keys are flatter, the key distance is also shorter.
I'm so used to use the trackpad to scroll, zoom, switching between spaces, and move cursor during coding, so that I would either put MX Keys on top of the keyboard of MacBookPro so I can reach its trackpad effortlessly, or I would just MX Keys and the Magic Trackpad beneath it, with the same relative location like the MacBookPro's keyboard and trackpad.
When I work with diagrams, slides, or UIs that require meticulous mouse control, I would use the MX Master 3S mouse. Its side wheel is configured to send Ctrl+Left and Ctrl+Right, and side buttons are configured to send Ctrl+Up and Ctrl+Down, both serving space switching.
The logi keyboard and mouse supports switch between 3 devices, so I can switch between 2 Macs. Unfortunately, one doesn't follow the other to switch, so I would rely on Mac's native support for keyboard and mouse sharing, and it goes like 2->1->MacBookPro->Tall, so there is minimal extra travel between 1 and tall.
One might noticed that such a setup is highly redundant, but this provides me with maximum flexibility and productivity:
- In coding mode, I could have both hands on the keyboard, with the left hand sometimes on the trackpad
- In browing mode, my left hand is on the trackpad, and the right hand is on the mouse
- In diagramming mode, both hands are also on the keyboard, with the right hand sometimes on the mouse
Thunderbolt bridge
I also have a Thunderbolt bridge, by connecting 2 Macs with a Thunderbolt cable, and following this guide. This would create a secure and fast connection between them for file transfer, screen sharing, distributed AI inference etc.
Such a bridge could also be used in MX Flow, but it has certain delay each time the cursor moves between the 2 Macs, so I didn't use it.