Unable to interact with external display for some reason

[minovermax]

I am currently using a Macbook Pro M1.

After changing some settings through BetterDisplay, the external monitor showed a black "Change Screen Mirroring Settings", and then stopped detecting my external monitor. Now, when I power my mac, it shows my wallpapaer, but after logging in the monitor cannot be deteected, and has no change. Just a blank wallpaper (no menu bar, can't move maouse there, irresponsive)

I have tried:

• Remove BetterDisplay from Start at Login settings (so the computer doesnt start with Better Display on)
• Resetting BetterDisplay
• Exhaustive Reset BetterDisplay

The funny thing is that when I make a test mac account and login to that, the external monitor works. When I log out of my account, log in to my test mac account, the external display works and is detected and works fine.

This makes me believe that it's some setting file in my user files that BetterDisplay messed with that's causing this issue.
Has anyone encountered a similar issue?

[waydabber]

Hi there,

what do you see under System Settings/Displays? Is the display present? If so, do you see it under "Arrange…" in the display layout?

If the display shows your wallpaper, then it should certainly be detected by the Mac (as it displays an image). I am not sure about the "Change Screen Mirroring Settings" message, I never encountered one to be honest.

[minovermax]

The funny thing is that it cannot be seen in the Display settings. It seems the monitor becomes unresponsive right after I login to my mac account.

The wallpaper changes when I alternate between accounts before logging in (when I don't put in the password), but after I login to the account I was originally using it becomes unresponsive. Changing the wallpaper after I login doesnt change the wallpaper on my external monitor. After waking it from sleep, it no longer shows the wallpaper and shows just a blank black screen as well.

Are there any known plist that is in charge for displays?

[waydabber]

Did you try simply reconnecting the display? Also, are you sure the external display is not detected as a TV and possibly configured to mirror a window or app (new feature in Sequoia) instead of acting like an extended display or mirror an other display? If the app mirrored does not have any window, the end result might simply be a blank screen (especially if this behavior is set as default). You should be able to configure this in the Control Center.

Display configurations should be stored in com.apple.windowserver.displays.plist however it is not a per user setting. There might be some kind of accessibility setting enabled maybe? I am honestly unsure what is happening but it would be great to figure out. :)

If it's a per-user setting that causes it, it should be under ~/Library/Preferences, maybe one of the com.apple.* files. You should take a look at these sorting them by Date Modified and looking at any that might have relevance. Removing these should not do anything (you should interact with them using the defaults command) as these settings are cached when they are in active used but usually if you reboot right afterwards it will take effect by next time.

Let me know if you find something!

BetterDisplay only interacts with the com.apple.windowserver.displays.plist directly with configuration editing, it does not interact with other userdefaults (or if it does, it might do so via APIs).

[waydabber]

Let me know if you figured something out regarding this @minovermax!