January 20, 2019 at 9:57 AM by Dr. Drang
A couple of weeks ago, I bought a Luna Display. It worked fine, but it didn’t feel comfortable doing what I’d bought it for, and I returned it after a few days. I learned in those few days that I don’t like running Mac software on an iPad, especially an iPad without a hardware keyboard.
Are your Astropad and Luna Display apps up-to-date? Access the latest software downloads available here. Thank you for being part of our Luna Display Community. In an effort to create one resource for our users for our current and future products, we will be utilizing one community going forward. You can jo 3: 388: March 9, 2020. What's neat is that you can control apps on your Mac mini through the iPad using the Luna Display app and then swipe out of it to access all of your standard apps. Switching between the two is.
If you know about Squarespace web hosting, Away luggage, and Casper mattresses, you’re familiar with the Luna Display. It’s been a ubiquitous sponsor of Apple-centric podcasts for months, so you know it’s a little plug that pops into the USB-C or Mini DisplayPort on your Mac and allows you to use your iPad as a sort of controllable monitor.
If you want to supplement what you’ve heard on podcasts and what you can read on the Luna site, T.J. Luoma has an excellent writeup on his Luna Display configuration, including some practical tips he’s picked up as he’s gained more experience with it.
Luna Display requires one Luna hardware and the appropriate primary and secondary apps. For Astropad, only the Luna hardware is required. For more information on system requirements, visit our Astropad Knowledge Base. Overall, I’d say the Luna Display worked exactly as advertised. But Because my iPad was acting as a Mac display, I was viewing the photos through Mac software, and none of the software I tried—while perfectly fine when run directly on the Mac itself—felt right when run indirectly on the iPad.
When I bought my Luna, I had a very particular use in mind, and it’s that use that informed my ultimate decision that the Luna wasn’t for me. I have an iMac in my office at work on which all my project-related files reside. Each project gets a folder (in Dropbox so I can also get them easily on my home iMac) and a bunch of subfolders for drawings, plans, specifications, and photographs of the machinery or building that the project is about. While I do most of my work in my office, inspections and testing of equipment are done in my company’s laboratory space, some 75–100 feet from my office. What I wanted from the Luna display was a quick and convenient way to refer to drawings and (especially) photographs from my iPad while I was looking at parts back in the lab.
With the photos on Dropbox, I could access them from the lab through either the Dropbox or Files apps, but latency was often a problem, as the iPad had to download each photo from the cloud before it could be displayed. I figured a local network solution, like the Luna Display, would solve the latency problem. Mac app development company internships.
And it did. Photos viewed through the Luna software popped up on the iPad screen quickly because they were coming through a fast internal network instead of through a sometimes sluggish outside connection. Overall, I’d say the Luna Display worked exactly as advertised. But…
Because my iPad was acting as a Mac display, I was viewing the photos through Mac software, and none of the software I tried—while perfectly fine when run directly on the Mac itself—felt right when run indirectly on the iPad.
When I’m working on my Mac and I need to flip through a bunch of photos, I typically open up the folder in which the photos are stored and do one of two things:
This system doesn’t work well on the iPad because its efficiency depends on keyboard shortcuts—the space bar to go in and out of QuickLook and the arrow keys to flip from photo to photo—and I don’t want to bring a keyboard with me into the lab. The value of the iPad in this situation is its compactness, the ability to set it up in a small space that doesn’t intrude on the inspection or test. You might think a keyboard wouldn’t take up enough space to get in the way, but it does.
There are other software options for viewing photos. Xee was the photo viewer I used to use a lot in the pre-QuickLook days. https://beastnew893.weebly.com/blog/how-to-remove-megabackup-app-from-mac. It’s a nice piece of software, and using it again during my Luna Display tryout has made me think I should go back to it (its ability to quickly show EXIF data very useful). But like the Finder/QuickLook system described above, it isn’t efficient without a keyboard and wasn’t a good fit with the Luna.
I also tried out Phiewer, which can give you both an overview of the photos in a folder like Icon View and a detailed view of an individual image like QuickLook. It has onscreen buttons for navigation—which is a waste of screen space for a Mac app, but a godsend if you’re running that Mac app on a keyboardless iPad—but it doesn’t allow zooming via pinching, and that just seems wrong when working on an iPad.
In fact, everything felt wrong when I was running Mac apps through my iPad. Buttons were too small, even when I tried tapping on them with the Pencil. Resizing windows was a chore; dragging felt off. I confess I didn’t spend time examining why the behavior just didn’t feel right, but it didn’t.
I use both my Macs and my iPad a lot, and while I don’t have any trouble switching between the two, I found it very annoying to be forced into using Mac-like actions on an iPad. This was surprising to me, as I have nearly 35 years of Mac use under my belt and only 2½ years of iPad use.1 But my immediate sense—a sense that didn’t change over the 4–5 days I used the Luna—was one of unease.
Would I have felt this unease had I been using the Luna Display in a more keyboard-centric manner? Maybe not. And I can see where people who are iPad-first users would find the Luna very convenient if they only occasionally need to be hands-on with their Mac mini server. But for my use, the neither-fish-nor-fowl behavior that the Luna forced me into was very inconvenient. It made me have to think about what I was doing instead of just doing it, and that got in the way of my real work.
The good thing that came out of my Luna Display tryout was that it made me think harder about a software-only solution to my problem. I finally learned of a way to use FileBrowser on my local network that was pleasant instead of teeth-grittingly frustrating, which was my previous FileBrowser experience. I’ll describe that in a later post.
Apple recently “Sherlocked” a company called AstroHQ, by that firm’s own acknowledgment, with a macOS 10.15 Catalina feature called Sidecar for converting an iPad into a secondary Mac monitor.
Sidecar essentially replicates the functionality of a physical Luna Display dongle that AstroHQ sells for $79.99—a seemingly steep price considering that Sidecar is free (see “Catalina’s Sidecar Turns an iPad into a Second Mac Monitor,” 21 October 2019, and “Luna Display Turns an iPad into a Responsive Mac Screen,” 7 December 2018).
So, what was AstroHQ to do? Company co-founder Matt Ronge took to Twitter earlier this month to announce Mac-to-Mac Mode for Luna Display.
If such a Mac-as-secondary-display set-up sounds vaguely familiar, you might be thinking of Apple’s own Target Display Mode, which does pretty much the same thing, but only under limited circumstances. You can use it to turn certain older iMacs into second displays for other Macs. But these setups tend to be temperamental.
TidBITS publisher Adam Engst used an older 21.5-inch iMac as a secondary display with his MacBook Air for a while, but the experience wasn’t entirely satisfying. He found that he often had to reinvoke Target Display Mode after the MacBook Air woke up, and he sometimes had to restart either the MacBook Air or the iMac to get it to work. Plus, it required keeping a keyboard attached to the iMac—purely to press Command-F2 to enable Target Display Mode—and while the iMac was hooked up, it somehow prevented audio from playing on the MacBook Air.
AstroHQ thinks the limited hardware requirements of Target Display Mode and its general flakiness give the Luna alternative an opening (shall we call it “Watsoning”?). For one thing, AstroHQ’s solution supports a wider range of dual-Mac scenarios—side-by-side MacBooks, for instance, or even a Mac mini with a MacBook functioning as its sole display.
But Mac-to-Mac Mode isn’t without its own issues. Most notably, although Mac-to-Mac Mode works with side-by-side iMacs, it doesn’t support either 21.5-inch or 27-inch iMacs with Retina displays—either 4K or 5K. That’s a shame, since it means you can’t use an older 27-inch iMac with Retina display as a 5K external monitor.
Luna Display Mac To Mac
That said, Mac-to-Mac Mode does support standard 4K displays.
Getting Started with Mac-to-Mac Mode
AstroHQ sells two versions of its Luna dongle—a USB-C model for use with newer Macs, and a Mini DisplayPort version for use with older machines.
In addition to one of the dongles, Mac-to-Mac Mode set-ups require the following:
Enabling a Mac-to-Mac connection is straightforward, as it tends to be with a Luna-initiated Mac-to-iPad connection.
First, launch the Luna Display app on your primary Mac. If you’re running 10.14 Mojave or later, you might be asked to modify Accessibility settings in System Preferences, but you should need to do this only once.
Second, open the Luna Secondary app on your secondary Mac. At this point, the two Macs should be able to link up automatically. After a bit of display flashing, your Desktop should expand from the primary Mac to the secondary Mac.
Automatic connections worked fine for me on some attempts, but not others for reasons I couldn’t discern.
If an automatic connection does not work, you can employ a workaround called Wi-Fi Manual Connect. Click this button in the apps on both Macs. You should then see a code appear in the app on the primary Mac. The same code also will show up in the app on the secondary Mac, but with a few digits omitted—fill those in, and you should be good to go.
Luna Display Primary Mac App
Wi-Fi Manual Connect worked well for me when automatic connections failed. Mac keychain app store.
Once connected, you can use the Luna Display app on the primary Mac to tweak how the two Macs function in relation to each other, with the secondary Mac on the left or right. Clicking Custom dumps you into the standard Display settings for additional adjustments.
Using the Mac-to-Mac ModeLuna Display App For Mac
To test Mac-to-Mac Mode, I persuaded my wife to part temporarily with her trusty 2015 MacBook Air, which I paired with my 2018 Mac mini (see “It Lives! Apple Announces Pro-Focused Mac mini,” 30 October 2018) and its LG UltraFine external display (see “Apple Debuts LG’s All-New 23.7-inch UltraFine Display,” 20 May 2019).
With the MacBook Air in hand, I tested Mac-to-Mac Mode in three scenarios. Two of these involved the USB-C Luna Display dongle, and the third tapped the Mini DisplayPort version.
1: MacBook Air As Secondary Display
My goal here was to use my LG UltraFine display as the main screen for my Mac mini, with the MacBook Air off to one side as a secondary monitor, much as I would when using an iPad with the Luna Display.
This dual-screen setup worked well, with my Mac mini’s extended Desktop displaying on the MacBook Air with its full 1400-by-900-pixel resolution, and with good responsiveness.
The Mac-to-Mac Mode connection was impressively hard to break. I repeatedly closed and reopened the MacBook Air’s lid, with the Luna Display hookup continuing as if nothing had occurred. Putting the Mac mini to sleep did break the Mac-to-Mac Mode link, as you’d expect, but the Luna apps were waiting upon reawakening and automatically reinitiated the connection.
I did notice one bizarre anomaly. While both the MacBook Air’s built-in keyboard and the Mac mini’s external keyboard behaved as expected for text input, only the Mac mini’s mouse and trackpad acted normally. When using the MacBook Air’s trackpad, I couldn’t move the cursor onto the Mac mini’s display—It was notebook-only, for some reason.
2: MacBook Air As Primary Display
What if you have a Mac mini as a “headless” Mac—tucked away in a closet, perhaps? Luna Display’s Mac-to-Mac Mode lets you use a Mac laptop as a wirelessly connected monitor whenever you need it. AstroHQ has already proposed using an iPad with a Mac mini in this way.
In my case, Mac-to-Mac Mode on my wife’s MacBook Air enabled me to use my Mac mini while on the comfy sofa far from my office.
To test this single-display solution, I had to physically disconnect my LG screen from the Mac mini so that the MacBook Air would become the Mac mini’s sole display.
But first, a few macOS tweaks were required for this to function properly:
Once I had twiddled those settings, I rebooted my Mac mini while launching the Luna Secondary app on the MacBook Air. A few seconds later, the Luna apps on the Macs found each other, and—presto!—I was looking at the Mac mini desktop on the MacBook Air’s screen.
Everything worked reasonably well. Responsiveness was a bit slow but not bad. All input devices—the Mac mini’s Magic Mouse, Magic Trackpad, and Magic Keyboard, along with the MacBook Air’s built-in laptop keyboard and trackpad—behaved as expected. Dependability was decent; closing and reopening the MacBook Air’s lid had no effect on the Mac-to-Mac Mode link.
Because the MacBook Air and Mac mini connected over Wi-Fi, I was able to work anywhere within the range of my Wi-Fi network. In fact, I wrote much of this article on the MacBook Air in my first-floor living room, wrapped in a warm blanket on the sofa (because winter is nigh here in Minnesota), with the Mac mini running on the second floor in my home office. Sweet.
3: MacBook Air As Primary Computer
Until now, my Mac mini has served as the primary computer in my Mac-to-Mac Mode experiments, with my wife’s MacBook Air as a secondary display. But what if I flipped things around and made the MacBook Air my primary computer, with my Mac mini’s LG monitor serving as a secondary display for the MacBook Air?
That’s where the Mini DisplayPort version of the Luna Display dongle comes in. I plugged it into the MacBook Air for use with the primary Luna Display app, and then I ran the Luna Secondary app on the Mac mini. The goal was to extend the MacBook Air’s Desktop onto the LG display, via the Mac mini. At least, that was the idea.
Unfortunately, I could not get this setup to work reliably. The Mac-to-Mac Mode connection crashed repeatedly. At times I could move the cursor between displays, but at other times, it refused to move.
It was a mess, as AstroHQ’s Matt Ronge acknowledged when I got in touch. He said his team was scrambling to fix bugs that interfered with the use of the Mini DisplayPort model of the Luna for Mac-to-Mac Mode connections. I plan to check back on this and leave any updates in a comment below.
For now, though, although I can recommend the USB-C version of the Luna Display dongle with Mac-to-Mac Mode, if your main Mac only has a Mini DisplayPort or Thunderbolt 2 port, hold off for a bit.
Revisiting Luna Mac-to-iPad Mode
Dusting off my Luna dongles, months after writing about how they enable iPads as secondary Mac monitors, allowed me to revisit that scenario — and compare it to Apple’s equivalent, the Catalina Sidecar feature I reviewed just last month.
Because of Sidecar’s oddities, the Luna approach came as a relief in some ways. Of particular note: Using macOS with touch on an iPad screen is better with AstroHQ’s implementation. You can reach out and do just about anything with a fingertip — which seems sort of obvious, right? Ah, but as I detailed in my Sidecar review, fingertip interaction will work for some things on the iPad screen, and not others. In many cases, an Apple Pencil is required. Ugh.
So, for those who can afford the purchase of the Luna hardware, this is the best way to turn an iPad into a Mac display. Because Sidecar is free, though, most people will end up using that — which is fine since it works reasonably well, the touch issues aside, and should get better over time.
Luna Display DownloadMac-to-Mac Mode: Bottom Line
Using one Mac as a secondary display for another Mac will not have occurred to most users because, until now, this has been possible only under narrow circumstances involving specific iMac models. And, as Adam Engst notes, Apple’s Target Display Mode doesn’t work very well.
Luna Display Review
AstroHQ, scrambling to remain relevant after being Sherlocked, has therefore done the Mac world a huge favor with its Mac-to-Mac Mode. Though not yet fully baked, especially on the DisplayPort end, Luna hardware and its related software are a godsend for those with extra Macs ready to be repurposed as second displays.
Luna Display Mac
This, of course, comes at a cost—the Luna dongles don’t come cheap, so every prospective user will have to weigh whether this is money well spent.
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