external monitor won't change to sleep mode and freezed when internal monitor is in sleep mode. about betterdisplay

[waydabber]

Hi @tofuliang

yes, unfortunately there are issues with sleep and virtual displays. This is mainly a macOS bug (can be reproduced by mirroring a native virtual display, like Sidecar to an other display). BetterDummy has some workarounds implemented, but they don't always work or sometimes the workaround itself causes issues. I filed a bug report about it to Apple a while back but I don't expect a quick fix (if any).

I posted a v1.0.9 release https://github.com/waydabber/BetterDummy/releases/tag/v1.0.9 - try disabling the Use mirrored dummy sleep workaround setting as that might help (or make things worse :)). Also see the release notes about the issue.

Please report back whether it changes things or not!

Thank you!

[tofuliang]

@waydabber I tried Version 1.0.9, it does not work. External monitor still freezed.
Anyway, many thanks for you work!

[waydabber]

I consolidated the sleep issues into a single issue: #76. I'll close this one as a duplicate for now. Let's continue the discussion under the new issue. Thank you!

[kerryj89]

@waydabber Can you add in shortcuts to set exact monitor brightness for all monitors at once? I would then create a shortcut to set to 0% on all. I use an app called Blackout for this currently but feel like your app is very close to supporting the same thing since it seems Apple is taking their time fixing this bug.

[waydabber]

Hi @kerryj89 - probably the simplest way to do this is to create a Shortcut in macOS Shortcuts with a shell script action and enter this:

/Applications/BetterDisplay.app/Contents/MacOS/BetterDisplay set -brightness=0%

This command will set all displays to 0% brightness at once. You can of course change the brightness level to anything else.

An other way is to enable display group syncing which synchronizes brightness control for all displays and simply hit the 0% area of the slider on the sync source display in the app menu.

I also plan to add presets support that should cover this use case with a built-in keyboard shortcut as well.