
Why I Stopped Using Multiple Monitors - vanni
https://hackernoon.com/why-i-stopped-using-multiple-monitors-bfd87efa2e5b
======
justboxing
> So why are we spending money to display multiple things simultaneously?

Full-stack and front end developers can really improve productivity
drastically and reduce ALT-TAB Keystrokes and back-and-forth scrolling when
developing and testing web-pages, responsive sites as well as web applications
that they use an IDE for.

At work, I have 2 monitors (21-inch each). On 1 monitor, I write my code in an
IDE, usually Visual Studio or sometimes in Notepad++. On the other Monitor I
have the website that I am building, open. As and when I make changes, do a
build, I simply have to refresh the screen on the other monitor instead of
pressing ALT-TAB over and over again and selecting the other window, if I had
just 1 monitor.

The 2nd use case, also common for full-stack or web developers, is when
debugging front end stuff like Javascript, CSS, HTML. I have the webpage open
in 1 monitor, and the chrome debugger in the other one, so I have a full
screen on each side to do the debugging. This exercise becomes especially
tedious with a single monitor, wherein, when you go F12, the chrome debugger
will occupy a good portion of your screen, no matter how you've docked it (to
the left, or right or the bottom).

On a single monitor, this means endless clicking, scrolling back and forth on
the page you are trying to debug, next think you know, your fingers and wrists
are sore and you haven't gotten too far in your work and your coworkers tell
you that you have RSI.

I wonder if OP is a command-line / backend developer, in which case, you may
be able to get away with a single monitor and not feel the pain :)

~~~
maxxxxx
If you are doing UI stuff that does graphics dual screens are very good. On
one screen the debugger, and on the other screen the target application. That
way you can debug each drawing step.

~~~
pjc50
For Windows paint event work non-overlapping windows are practically a
requirement - if you let another window on top of the one you have paused in
the debugger, the OS will draw over it and lose the current paint state.

Then there are scenarios which require two screens on two machines. With
"synergy" this can be really seamless with one keyboard / mouse.

~~~
mrguyorama
That's the first time I've ever seen someone else mention "Synergy"

I used it back in college When I had a spare laptop I wanted to use as a
second display. It seemed like it was doing really hacky things behind the
scenes but was probably the easiest instance of "Software Remote KVM" I've
ever seen.

~~~
falcolas
Synergy is still around, and still works remarkably well. The mouse scrolling
between OSes is a bit janky still, but still something I can use every day.

------
oxguy3
Not a big fan of the judgmental attitude in this article.

> So why do so many workers demand multiple monitors? I believe it’s a case of
> the illogical allure of extremes.

> Too much of anything becomes its opposite . — Tim Ferriss

If you don't like multiple monitors, fair enough, but don't dismiss everyone
else as wrong without considering how their workflow may differ from yours.

I can work fine with one screen, but I can work even better with multiple.
Just like the author of this article, I make heavy use of macOS's workspaces.
Being able to have three workspaces visible at once is highly preferable to
just one -- it is easier to turn my head than to jump through workspaces with
my keyboard shortcuts.

Unlike the author suggests, I am not trying to focus on multiple things at
once -- my focus remains on one monitor at a time. The multiple monitors just
makes it easier to shift focus when I need to.

~~~
code_duck
Agreed, it's only his perspective and isn't very persuasive. A major premise
of the article is that having multiple displays will lead me to open
distracting things in the additional screen space. Since this is not what I
do, just about the whole article isn't relevant.

Typically, I would be coding on the left monitor, and then keep a browser open
with references on the right. This keeps me from being distracted by having to
switch tabs.

------
KillerX
I claim that a major issue is that people do not use a good window manager.
The window managers provided by default by most OS are frankly crap.

The author writes that he "spent way too much time fiddling with the windows".
If you have a window manager that does the "fiddling" for you, suddenly
multiple screens and/or huge screens become super useful as the windows will
arrange themselves in a sane way no matter what you are doing. A prime example
for me is Xmonad. Yes, it takes a day to configure it and learn it but after
that you will find yourself super annoyed as to why new application window
that just opened did not automatically resize itself to the side, etc.

------
drabiega
This may be a function of the somewhat fickle nature of my short term memory,
but I find the transition of looking between screens to be noticeably easier
than switching between virtual desktops or something similar.

This is despite the fact that I use keyboard shortcuts for switching between
maximized windows on a single monitor and do so pretty fluidly.

------
willtim
He says _" I rarely need the docs visible at the same time I’m writing code. I
read the relevant doc, then code. My workflow is modal."_

This is certainly not a common opinion. Most people want to glance back and
forth quickly. And most people hate modal dialogs.

~~~
CorvusCrypto
I'm guilty of printing spec sheets and physically holding them up along side
my code. I haven't touched embedded systems in a while so I don't anymore, but
I agree some things are best read side-by-side.

~~~
SAI_Peregrinus
Student, so talking about my home setup.

Whenever I'm doing any electronics work I open datasheets on one monitor and
the SPICE tool / layout software / etc on the main monitor. It's especially
useful when making component footprints for PCB layouts, swapping back & forth
was bad enough that I used to just print out the needed pages.

------
makecheck
Multi-monitor support is still hugely flaky even in 2017. (Even Apple, which
had done this perfectly for years, had a phase in the days of Lion where all
their new full-screen crap was horribly useless on two-display setups.)

W10 will utterly destroy your window layout for having the audacity to undock
a laptop from a two-display setup. Sometimes it will completely forget the 2nd
display that had been working for weeks, with no clear way to fix. Sometimes
the display is not "on" yet it is "functional" from W10, leading to
aggravating scenarios like windows only located/usable from the display you
can't see, requiring you to practically disconnect a laptop to use anything
again.

Conceptually not hard but apparently rocket science for OS implementers.

~~~
SomeHacker44
Not just Windows. Even single monitor unplugging and re-plugging messes
everything up on my 10.12 running MBP. Sometimes it even forgets my screen
scaling settings on the 4K external. It also loves to move windows so that
only 20 pixels of the window is showing at some edge of the screen.

------
rconti
I hadn't used multiple monitors in perhaps 6 or 7 years. When stuck with small
displays I used 2x19" but I hated not having a "central" monitor -- for me,
it's gotta be an odd number. And I hated using dissimilar-sized monitors. And
of course 3x24"\+ is kind of overkill, desk space-wise.

Managed to use a 27" Thunderbolt display at each of my last 2 jobs, and I love
it. I never would have used a laptop screen as a second display, because the
size and pixel density is different. I don't 100% agree with the author
though, as I frequently have 2 items side-by-side, and unless you're
fullscreened, they resize/rearrange improperly when you switch from desktop
display to laptop display.

I also kind of disagree with his use of virtual desktops -- don't get me
wrong, I use them too, but I ONLY use them because I have multiple windows on
a single display arranged the way I want them. If I was just using single
fullscreened apps, you could just as easily alt-tab between them. Virtual
desktops are for when you want a collection of windows to stay together.

I also find my biggest distraction is switching to another virtual desktop
while I wait for a 10-120 second task to complete, and I get distracted. So
instead I use desk toys and am willing to allow myself to "look" unproductive,
waiting for a computing task to finish while I fiddle with a piece of bike
chain or whatever, rather than getting lost in another task and losing focus.

Today I am using a single 27" display with my laptop display right under it. I
know, violating my own rule, but it's working well for my use case of web
learning+chat on the main display and a terminal window on the lower laptop
display for running examples. When I'm back to "real" work I'll likely go back
to a single display for focus.

------
LyndsySimon
I mostly agree with the author here - I work on a 15" MBP, and am remote more
than I'm in the office.

Where I differ slightly is that when I am in the office, I have a single, 24"
16:9 monitor connected in addition to my laptop's screen. I use it very
sparingly. It contains only iTerm, which is running tmux and has all of my dev
stuff running. I almost never _need_ to see both my terminal and my
IDE/browser/whatever at once, but when I do need my terminal it's very nice to
have twice the history I would normally have on my laptop's monitor on the
screen at one time. I find it invaluable particularly when reading logs.

------
pfarnsworth
That's great that OP is happy with a single monitor.

I love my multiple monitors. It lets me organize my windows without having to
alt-tab between them. I find it helps me a great deal.

I don't think there's anything wrong with OP using a single monitor, but don't
shit on my choices just because you think differently.

This is one of the biggest problems with people today, they believe their
OPINION is the BEST, but they forget that it's just an opinion. Other people
can have different opinions for perfectly valid reasons, and they're not
wrong.

------
tomsthumb
I also use one monitor for a similar combination of reasons. The ergonomics
are better and work flows are similar on just my laptop compared to my large
everyday monitor at work.

Many of my coworkers use multiple monitors as a way to "deal" with sprawl,
except it really just facilitates sprawl. Using just one makes me be more
disciplined with regards to floating and extra 4 dozen browser tabs. Multiple
workspaces with their own separate reasons for existing help preserve context
when switching out of a task is necessary, and again makes it easier to prune
terminal and browser tabs because they exist to a particular end.

Multiple desktops and good window management are a must. Spectacle on OSX or a
tiling WM on linux (not familiar with windows) are a must. Toss in tmux
(obviously not mandatory) and it's great. It takes discipline, and a bit of up
front work, but once you have your patterns it's much quicker to find
information, tabs, terminals, etc and then toss out three chrome windows with
50 tabs and 8 terminal shells.

I do ops, and so might have to juggle a larger variety of contexts than some
devs who spend 90% of their time in an IDE, but maybe not.

There is a good case to be made for two monitors if you spend extensive
periods of time working with, e.g. wireshark or similar, but that's the only
case I've come across in almost a decade where two monitors > one (large)
monitor + good wm w/ multiple desktops.

------
nxsynonym
My workflow dictates using 2-4 browser windows + email + excel all
simultaneously. I currently use 2 monitors + laptop screen as third. I can't
image cutting down to just the laptop screen.

I see the point about less distractions, but tbh I find it more distracting to
swap between multiple tabs/windows/desktops than to just move my eyes.

------
Overtonwindow
I would like to see studies of specific industries. In government affairs,
have multiple monitors is a lifesaver. Research on one screen, writing on the
middle, email and other time sensitive resources on the right. I tried it with
just one monitor and my quality and time dramatically improved with three.

------
chrisper
At home I only have one monitor and it is plenty. I don't need to focus on
multiple things.

At work (as a Software Engineer) I'd not want to have to work on one display
only. I am way more productive if I don't have to switch between a billion
tabs in Visual Studio.

------
otterpro
I find it easier to work on 3 small/midsize (13"-24") monitors rather than 1
large (28" and above ultra-wide) monitor. It's the best of both world, because
of large combined screen estate, and at the same time, a single monitor for
focus. I have that monitor on the center, directly in front of me, and I have
my editors, shells, etc, and it allows me to focus on that task, but have
additional monitor on the sides, just in case I need to glance at books, to-do
list, schedule, etc. Having other monitors at the side prevents them from
becoming a distraction, where it would be if it were placed in my primary line
of sight.

I don't like to use needless Alt/Cmd-Tab, if I can. Not only that, on Windows,
Alt-Tab is poorly implemented, and it takes me forever to search for the right
window. If I have few editor windows open, it would take me a while to hunt
and peck for the right one, because they all look similar. On Mac, it's a lot
easier since Cmd-Tab cycles through different apps, and Cmd-backtick cycles
through same apps.

Using my laptop outside wasn't that great, and I've even contemplated getting
one or two small portable USB monitors, or use tablets as secondary monitor
using AirDisplay or Duet.

------
feelandcoffee
In the office I have a triple monitor solution, maybe the last one it's an
overkill but as someone who does front-end programing and content creation I
can see the productivity advantages of this setup, when I have to work from
home where I only have one monitor I feel a little claustrophobic.

In my case usually I use it something like this: [youtube/google
music/docs][code][browser] or [folders/video files/script/client brief-
indications][video editor][preview fullscreen]

I think this it's the kind of stuff that depends a lot on the way some people
feel with multitasking, distractions and specially on their nature of the job.

Like the article says, probably writers, spreadsheet people, or even
programmers who needs little documentation and makes all the testing in the
IDE can benefit from this approach to "focus" only in one monitor.

------
thanatropism
There has to be a name ("Foobar's Law") for the idea that computers are
optimized to developers' needs.

In my open office floor plan the people who have two monitors do heavy
spreadsheet work. In some fields of work deeply horizontal sheet designs (long
timelines for cashflow models) are common, which makes non-maximized windows
impracticable. More generally, most of the common office worker's day is
developing spreadsheets and writing reports on them. Not having to alt-tab is
invaluable in such situations.

(Myself, I use a laptop with an additional monitor. The laptop screen is
smaller and "underprivileged", it runs web research and work chat, the larger
screen holds whatever I'm intensively working on.)

------
thinbeige
These one or two monitor discussions often miss an important information.

It makes a big difference if you mean with 'monitor' a 27" 5k monitor or a 24"
1080p monitor. If you mean latter you definitely need two. If former one is
better than two.

~~~
ge96
Currently using two 19" 1366x768

2 1080p 22" would be nice.

Yeah try one of those big curved monitors haha.

------
cjbillington
Hm. I'm not convinced.

Right now I'm writing a thesis. It's in LaTeX, and auto compiles when a file
changes. So on one monitor I've got my text editor and the PDF output. It's
very nice to keep writing and get the output asynchronously, with the PDF
flickering to indicate it's updated, which I can see in my peripheral vision
and look over at it.

And, what if something goes wrong during compilation? I want my terminal to be
visible, and again in my peripheral vision I'll see a sea of red error
messages and know to look over there to see what I did wrong. So on my other
monitor I have the terminal running the make command for auto-compiling.

In practice I have more windows open: version control, citations manager
program, file browser. They're all part of the same task, they are not
distractions. But for this workflow I need at least the text editor, the
terminal, and the PDF viewer. I'm not sure how I could do this with a single
monitor without seriously compromising on the amount of my actual thesis I can
see on my screen in either the text editor or the PDF - maybe shrinking the
terminal down tiny so I can see the last line of output and then making it
larger to see the context of the error if there was one, but that's getting a
bit ridiculous.

Maybe if I used a monolithic IDE for everything it would be able to fit all
this information into one maximised window in a clever way, only showing me
what was relevant at any one time. But if you're not using an IDE, I find that
my workflow for any non-trivial task almost always involves multiple programs
and windows, and switching is a pain.

And when I'm making plots for my thesis, it's text editor and terminal, and
then multiple matplotlib plot windows popping up when I run the command from
the terminal. If I don't want to spend all my time moving the plot windows
around so that I can see the code that made them whilst I decide my next move,
then multiple monitors are a godsend.

It's not like I'm leaving my email or facebook up permanently - that would be
a terrible idea. My browser is minimised (unless I'm typing code based on
online docs) and spotify is over on another desktop.

------
gozur88
I use multiple monitors at work and a single monitor at home when I work from
home. I find myself far more productive at the office. There are just too many
instances where I need to code and look at a document at the same time, or
code and look at the program output at the same time. Sure, I have to move my
eyes from one monitor to the other, but that's far preferable to switching
tasks and then switching back, trying to remember what I was looking at.

The other alternative is to have tiny windows of text scattered around my
screen. Some people seem to enjoy working like that, but it drives me crazy.

------
protomyth
I can see it in the pictures for the article, that the author elevates the
smaller monitors, but it doesn't look like the LG Widescreen was elevated as
high. I really like the LG for my use, but I found that having the center of
the screen (both width and height) straight across from my eyes. My posture is
better and the stuff on the sides of the monitor are clear. Plus all the movie
playing software that centers the movie. I really wish on laptops that movies
would align to the top of the monitor.

I've never liked two monitors because one always turns into a weird status
display.

------
ulisesrmzroche
I used to do double/triple monitors but it's easy to slip into the habit of
swiveling the neck instead of the whole body, and over time, that could lead
to injury. At least it did for me. Neck pain stopped a while after I went
single-monitor. Well, it's still there, but definitely got loads better.

Personally, I work with netflix/youtube on for background noise so I can't
attest to the attention stuff, but if you're feeling a little neck/shoulder
pain, try single-monitor and see if it helps.

------
barrkel
I, for one, don't maximize any applications other than my editor - and emacs
has panes, so those things aren't maximised either. I also don't move or
resize windows except when I'm forced to use a single monitor. My windows are
distributed such that any two that need to be visible at the same time never
overlap.

Code under test, including a web browser and terminals are on my left monitor.
My main web browser, debugger and editor / IDEs are on the right. It's really
rare to have them mixed.

------
rocqua
I have recently considered the same switch. For me, the second screen is very
often a source of distraction. I already have the problem of not being able to
do any work at home. Previously I attributed that to the use of my PC for
entertainment. Perhaps this is also a factor.

I originally bought 2 screens for productivity reasons, now I find I am much
more productive working on my laptop else were. There were certainly moments
where it helped productivity, but maybe that is offset by the distraction.

------
no-s
The OP has a treadmill desk. Of course then turning his head will be a PITA.
Perhaps he should change jobs, say do something door-to-door where he'll
always be moving about and not have to deal with the weighty issue of how to
allocate his screen real estate productively when his peripheral vision is
inadequate for reading.

His manifesto is perhaps built upon some faulty premises...

------
githubber123
I basically stopped programming from home when it came to refactoring code or
front end design because of how annoying working on my laptop is with a single
screen. I either need 2 monitors in my office or a giant screen like my 2
monitors at work. Once you get use to life without alt+tab hell just to read
something it's hard to go back. Now that I think about it I wonder how I ever
got into blender modeling on my laptop while trying to watch tutorials.

------
Spartan-S63
I went from a 3x24" 1080p monitor setup to a single 34" Ultrawide recently and
really enjoyed the move. I'm just as productive, if not more, and having more
horizontal screen space makes up for losing the extra monitors. Overall, I
would recommend one larger, higher resolution monitor over multiple smaller
ones. There's less context switching because you're looking at the same
monitor the entire time.

------
BrandoElFollito
I was surprised to see at the end the author does frontend development.

I do some (purely amateur) and find that having the code in front, the ability
to glance on a livereload browser on the left and on DevTools on the right is
quite comfortable.

But as I said, I am a pure amateur and (seriously) sit in the corner "not good
enough to understand why this is not effective"

------
danans
I also made the switch to a single large monitor several years ago, for all
the benefits the article mentions.

However, I do still find it useful to have a laptop on my desk for my non-work
email, browsing, etc. Not only does this make it easier to "find" my personal
content without sifting through work-related windows, but the physical
separation also helps keep it in a separate mental space from my work, which
benefits both.

~~~
bluedino
I tried justifying having more than one computer for a long time, and this is
the best way to do it - one for work and one for personal use.

You can take it to an extreme and do a laptop per project as well.

------
amag
This is _highly_ dependent on the kind of work you do as a developer. A lot of
times I'm just using one monitor and switch between windows and that's fine.
Edit some text, run a build script, run some tests, commit to git. But when
doing some serious debugging, e.g. remote debugging a kernel mode driver on a
virtual machine, using two displays is almost mandatory.

------
dugmartin
I used multiple monitors for years but for the last year or so I've switched
to a single 44" 4k TV as my monitor (at 4096x2160). I still use virtual
desktops but they are for organizing sets of the work - one desktop for my
current contracting work, one for personal projects, one for financial apps,
etc. Once I get the windows setup on a desktop they rarely move.

------
ghostbrainalpha
It seems like everyone in the comments who prefers multiple monitors has a
strong use case for each.

If you are chunking your tasks such that each monitor really is a window into
a different process or different machine, then it really makes sense to have
two.

If you ask yourself the question, what is my second monitor for specifically,
and you can't answer it, you might prefer only having one.

------
ge96
Love dual monitor, display on the right code on left and i3-wm, but would like
to get used to just using a single monitor/laptop.

~~~
CorvusCrypto
I use both. When I am in the office I have almost the same setup you describe.
Code on the right on a vertical monitor and the program itself on the left.
However when I am on my laptop at home it's not that bad, it's just a bit more
work to tab back and forth between the terminal, editor, and program a bit
more.

This argument about which is better is really silly imo. It's not like tabbing
or switching focus is the main waste of time. I'd be willing to bet a lot of
people arguing for either side spend more time browsing HN or Reddit than
managing their workflow :V (speculation obvs)

~~~
ge96
Interesting the right/left preference. Not sure if that's related to
right/left handed or side preference I don't know. Like you read a book from
left to right (sorry probably an arbitrary thought).

I too thought about the vertical oriented monitor is it good? You see more
lines. I like the minmap for VSCode if you happen to use that. To see a code
pattern/structure at a glance.

~~~
CorvusCrypto
vertical monitor is a blessing and a curse at times. For just coding, it's
great because I have more lines to reference at once. However when I show the
directory tree for my projects my width is small and sometimes hard to deal
with. Same problem with having a mini-map sadly.

I actually am right handed and read left-to-right. My dominant screen is my
left screen and it used to be my editor screen, but I switched my code to the
right because nowadays more of my work is server monitoring, communication,
and review of code. The wider screen space is nice for this.

~~~
ge96
Yeah I do wish min-map only expanded when you hovered over that area, too
eager to post issues/requests though on their GitHub.

What do you use for server monitoring? Do you have fail overs... I recently
implemented server side encryption and was running into memory exhaustion
problems, upped cores/ram. Was surprised to read it's bad or less performant
when your computer starts using swap.

Man $34/mo seems expensive for hosting using t2.medium under Amazon.

Ahh well,. I like seeing the nginx worker/php-fpm pool appear in HTOP

Edit. Only using PHP as that's currently the back end language I know how to
work with and what the stack uses but could see benefits using Go or
something.

------
mrfusion
The best use case for two monitors is to have a reference document on one
screen and the thing you're doing on the other screen.

~~~
bluedino
You can do this with a single monitor it's large enough as well.

------
FiatLuxDave
One thing I don't see in the discussion here, is how many monitors your users
are using. Developing and testing on a different environment than your
customers are using is asking for problems. It's the same issue as developers
who develop and test on high bandwidth connections and then end up missing
issues that customers on low-bandwidth connections see.

I remember working on an application that ran in a clinical environment where
available screens were limited (so the user base was almost 100% single
screen). The developers used two screens exclusively. There was an issue that
was reported by the customers which the developers could not reproduce, which
would cause a complete freeze of the system. Finally, I went through the
process step by step with one of the developers. I noticed that the developer
would click on a pop-up message that was appearing on the right screen. The
customers did not have a right screen to click on. So the process required
clicking on a pop-up appearing off-screen. The problem was simple to fix, but
was never noticed because the environment was different. I stuck with a single
screen for years because it was what my users were using.

------
rubicon33
Windows management software on Mac sucks.

I use the same windows every day. I should be able to quickly hit something
like "ctrl+cmd+9" and send all my windows to pre-defined places on my screen.
It should allow grouping of windows by type (so all Chrome windows go to the
same area) or by tagging a window.

------
atsaloli
Coming soon - 49" curved monitor

[http://www.samsung.com/us/computing/monitors/gaming/49--
chg9...](http://www.samsung.com/us/computing/monitors/gaming/49--chg90-qled-
gaming-monitor-lc49hg90dmnxza/)

~~~
lostmsu
Less than 4k on 49"? I have 40" and 4k resolution. Clearly, this monitor does
not have enough vertical space for coding.

~~~
atsaloli
How much vertical space do you need for coding?

------
ctrlrsf
I also switched from two monitors to one a few months ago. Main reason was I
wanted to eventually switch to a standing desk and one monitor was going to
make that easier. Also, when I work remote I can just use my laptop's screen
and not be used to that second monitor.

------
SomeHacker44
I use one 27" 4K monitor at work, and one 38" 21:9 1600p monitor at home. I
think I would prefer a 30" 4K monitor instead at home, as the screen is so
wide it requires a head turn to see the edges.

I used to run three 30" 2560x1600 monitors, but that was just insane.

------
lanius
It just depends on what you're doing. If I'm streaming on Twitch, I use one
monitor for fullscreen gaming and use an additional monitor to check viewer
chat.

------
brightball
Couldn't even imagine going back. There are so many times when I'm typing on
one screen while looking at a different screen.

------
yc-kraln
Thanks for your useless blog opinion, I will continue to use 4+ monitors and
be productive.

------
donald123
Why is this old article brought up again? Already discussed almost half year
ago.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13968519](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13968519)

------
jdalgetty
One screen work and one screen for communication

