Reclaiming your second monitor in OS X Lion
Upgraded to Lion? Use dual monitors? Notice the full screen problem? My lab mate Rob and I found an interesting hack.
- Open an application in full screen mode (e.g. Terminal)
- Use three fingers on the trackpad and move slightly to the right or left so you are transitioning into the respective space (the ‘transition position’). Hold this position.
- While maintaining the transition position, launch another application. For example, use spotlight to launch TextEdit by pressing the apple key + space and search for TextEdit. Choose it, and press enter.
- Still holding the transition position, wait until your application loads.
- Let go of the transition position by lifting your three fingers.
I stumbled across this by accident while trying to open system preferences when in full screen mode as you can see in the attached picture.
Now your second screen is not a paperweight 
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now wait a minute. U have the menu bar on the external. all FS apps will work this way, without all the three finger manipulation. that’s not a fix…
Hero Jig
August 4, 2011 at 10:03 pm
Hi Hero,
When I am in full screen mode for an application like Terminal in Lion [1], without the three-finger manipulation, I cannot open multiple applications in the same screen, and moreover, drag them to multiple screens. The point is that you can open multiple applications in full screen mode, not that the full-screened application opens to the primary display (which happens to be my external monitor here).
[1] this doesn’t include an application like Google Chrome which doesn’t seem to have implemented the full screen behavior in the same way as the Apple apps yet
Geet
August 5, 2011 at 10:41 am
To the naysers,
Geet’s claims are as real as they are spectacular. I, a neutral observer, happened to be on the right side of history and was a front-row observer to the discovery.
— Geet’s (unpaid) intern
a working man
August 5, 2011 at 12:01 pm
Well…you solved a major headache for me, this is a great fix…as a person with three monitors, i found myself having to restart to reclaim my powerpoint presentations or whatever it was i was working on.
This “fix” is brilliant. Thank you.
ernie capobianco
August 8, 2011 at 10:15 am
Hi Ernie — glad its useful
. My most common use is full screen terminal on external monitor with music application on the laptop, which is possible again
Geet
August 8, 2011 at 10:30 am
I think you’ve got #2 and #3 flipped around. I tried doing it the way described but my keyboard would lock up in the transition mode. Launching the app from Spotlight or Quicksilver or Alfred first, then immediately transitioning, then waiting for the app to fully load works for me (kinda annoying depending on the speed of your Mac—I’m on a 2008 Mac Pro). Otherwise, awesome trick! It’s only a matter of time until Apple fixes this imo.
John Coleman V
August 8, 2011 at 10:21 pm
Hi John — interesting switching 2 and 3 does work for me, as well as keeping the original order (but evidently that seems to not work for you). Thanks for the note!
Geet
August 9, 2011 at 8:36 am
Genius! Killer find – and thanks for sharing!
Luke Mccormick (@LukeMcCormick)
August 23, 2011 at 10:39 am
ps – I used Quicksilver to launch the second application, and it worked swimmingly.
Luke Mccormick (@LukeMcCormick)
August 23, 2011 at 10:41 am
Cheers! Nice to know about Quicksilver too.
Geet
August 23, 2011 at 10:49 am
This is an amazing trick! Worked perfectly with the original instructions using Alfred.
)
Krishna
August 30, 2011 at 6:12 am
[...] functions are also hard to use for app maximized window on second display. Workaround: use this hack for opening another app in full screen as well as REMEMBER the keyboard [...]
Samuel Ye's IT Blog » Blog Archive » Lion Upgrade Issues
September 15, 2011 at 7:39 am
At Geet,
Is it possible for you to post a video. I tried what you said but can’t get it to work and not sure if I’m doing it wrong.
Thanks,
Gabriel
Gabriel
September 19, 2011 at 6:20 pm
Wow! I can’t believe that worked. It’s doesn’t really solve the issue, but it’s definitely a nice little hack that will work until Apple (hopefully) fixes this. Thanks!
Tylor
September 23, 2011 at 7:26 am
At Tylor and everyone,
When you say it worked, are you saying you can change desktops (spaces) and retain the application that was running (showing) on the second monitor?
Gabriel
September 23, 2011 at 7:34 am
What’s interesting to me about it is that Apple seems to have done this on purpose, but I can’t figure out a really good reason why
Hi Gabriel — what you are referring to (changing desktops but keeping an application fixed) is different (sometimes this is referred to as making the application ‘sticky’ or ‘pinning it down’). Searching for “os x sticky windows” yields some results that might be of interest. the fix above basically allows you to run a second application in the same space of monitors as a full screen application. So if you have two monitors, a full screen application can run on one of them while another one (e.g. iTunes) can run on the secondary display
Geet
September 23, 2011 at 11:16 am
Thats a great trick, thanks. I used Alfred to open the 2nd app and even a 3rd. It is a little buggy though:
* No menu bar
* Display keeps flipping back to another space when I click on the newly opened app in this view.
I just found out that chrome now supports full screen and want the old behavior back as it worked better with multiple monitors.
Terry Bernstein
September 29, 2011 at 12:40 pm
Very cool. I had the exact same experience as Terry Bernstein. I guess the solution is to just not use full-screen apps. : /
Matt Fry
October 11, 2011 at 11:11 am
Don’t work for me
What should I set up in Trackpad
and could you please guide me
Immanuel Sonprint
November 9, 2011 at 2:32 am
or post a video clip
Immanuel Sonprint
November 9, 2011 at 2:33 am
Terry and Matt: I also find those issues annoying
. I find that I launch a second app on full screen maybe every few days because of these types of things.
Immanuel: could you describe more details of what you do and what happens?
Geet
November 13, 2011 at 12:22 am
[...] found a way around the useless full screen implementation in OSX, thanks to Geet Duggal. Here’s a refined version of the procedure, where I’ll have Xcode full screen on one [...]
Dual Monitor Full Screen Fix for OSX Lion | Tom Medley
November 15, 2011 at 12:11 pm
Cool trick for how to get an application running on a second screen when in full-screen mode on OSX Lion.
Ted Mann (@turkeymonkey)
January 26, 2012 at 1:10 pm