In March, Apple announced a new M3 MacBook Air lineup. At that time, Cupertino updated its thinnest Macs with a new processor that was up to 60 percent faster than the model with the M1 chip and up to 13x faster than the fastest Intel-based MacBook Air.
The 16-core Neural engine enabled several AI features, including real-time speech-to-text, translation, text predictions, visual understanding, accessibility functions, hardware-accelerate ray-tracing, and more.
While the new MacBook Air was on par with the entry-level MacBook Pro with the M3 chip introduced in late 2023, it had one big difference: it lacked support for dual monitors when the Mac’s lid was closed. At the time, people didn’t understand why a base-model M3 MacBook Air had this feature while the M3 MacBook Pro didn’t.
However, a few months after this controversy, Apple updated the M3 MacBook Pro with this feature. With the recently released macOS 14.6 software update, Apple added support for dual monitors when the laptop’s lid is closed. In addition, the company updated a support document teaching MacBook users how to use this feature.
That said, if you own a M3 MacBook Pro or MacBook Air, follow the steps below:
- Connect an external keyboard and mouse or trackpad.
- Connect the Mac to power. If the external display provides power to the Mac, a separate power adapter isn’t needed.
- Connect the first display. This will be the primary display, supporting up to 6K resolution at 60Hz (or 4K at 144Hz).
- Close the laptop lid.
- Connect the second display. This will be the secondary display, supporting up to 5K resolution at 60Hz (or 4K at 100Hz).
With this change, users can now take advantage of two Studio Display monitors in full resolution, or a Pro Display XDR and Studio Display-like options.
While it will remain a mystery why Apple took so long to update the M3 MacBook Pro with this capability, at least the problem has now been solved. Below, you can learn more about when we expect M4 Macs to arrive.
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