Have had an odd issue with my Mac Studio and 3 identical Samsung 4k monitors from day 1. Firstly, the built in HDMI port never liked to play with any of the displays, it would randomly blank out briefly. I just picked up another USB-C to HDMI dongle, no big deal there. Takes up another IO port but I needed a hub anyway… What bugged me most was it kept loosing the display arrangement!
I have all 3 of them in the line on a VESA 3-monitor arm, and randomly macos would always mismatch the same two displays; the center and right monitor would swap places. I always was hopeful any coming update would fix the problem, until tonight I finally had enough and have since physically arranged the monitors to how macOS keeps defaulting… a low tech workaround to a odd software problem…
But hold up! The issue came back!! I don’t know how, but this might be a good topic to call into the tech guys about… Even after physically moving the displays it still switched the order of the left and center monitors. Swapping the cables and dongles does nothing…
It just shows that the order is not intentional. The solution to the problem is for the developers to come up with an intentional design that anchors the hardware to a logical order or a physical order if logical ordering is not possible.
Something to try, to help diagnose but not fix the issue… is to turn off the monitors rather than let them power save, and then turn them on one by one in your chosen order. I suspect that sub-second timings of how they’re “identifying/reporting” to the OS may play a part.
It’s definitely an interesting issue. I haven’t stumbled across any utilities that solve this problem, of taking a hardware ID and locking it to a certainly position. I’l give the shutoff and turn on in order routine a try.
I do not know if this is in any way related but I have issues with a new M2 Mac mini and Apple Studio Display. When the system wakes from a long sleep the windows that were open or minimized to the Dock now open at reduced size and shifted to the bottom left corner of the display.
This happens with all user accounts.
I erased the system, reinstalled Ventura and reinstalled all my apps and data but it made no difference. This has been with Apple for almost a month but it requires a sleep of at least 30 minutes so I haven’t been able to reproduce it in the Apple Store.
I believe it is a result of the handshake about resolution and screen size between the mini and the Studio Display. I want Apple to loan me another Studio Display to test but they have not agreed yet.
Same thing reported here. Guess it’s a ‘hard computer problem’ if all the displays are identical. Do displays have a persistent identifier the OS can use to remember how you set them up?
I run a Mac Mini M1 with two monitors (HDMI + USB-C to HDMI cable). Nothing fancy, just two 1080P AOC monitors. I don’t get any swapping issues. I wonder if those who have swapping issues would experience the same if just using DisplayPort.