MacBook and external display posture setups that work

Put the screen you look at most straight in front of you, with its top edge level with your eyes or slightly lower, roughly an arm's length away. Then decide what the MacBook is for. If you use both screens through the day, raise the laptop on a stand beside the display so the two sit at about the same height. If you rarely look at the laptop's screen, close it and run the Mac in clamshell mode with a separate keyboard and mouse.

Either way, the keyboard and mouse belong in front of you, lined up with the main screen. A common mistake is the reverse: the laptop open on the desk in front, because that is where it was, and the big display pushed off to one side, where you spend the day with your head turned. This post walks through the setups that work and the Mac settings that go with them. If you only have the laptop, good posture with a MacBook covers that case.

Decide what goes in front of you

Your body, your keyboard and your main screen should all face the same way. If the screen you use most sits off to one side, you turn your head toward it for hours, and the neck and shoulders on that side pay for it.

• One main screen, one secondary. Center the main screen on you, so its middle is roughly in line with your nose. The second screen goes beside it, angled in a little.
• Two screens you use equally. Put the point where they meet in front of you, and angle both slightly inward, like an open book.
• The keyboard. Center the letter keys on your body, not the whole keyboard. With a full-size keyboard, the number pad sits off to the right and the mouse goes beyond it, so a compact keyboard keeps the mouse closer.

Be honest about which screen you use most. Plenty of people buy a big display, then keep reading email on the laptop because it happens to be nearer.

Setup 1: display in front, MacBook on a stand beside it

This is usually the best setup if you use both screens a lot. The external display goes straight ahead. The MacBook goes on a stand to one side, raised so its screen sits at about the same height as the display, with the two top edges roughly level. Angle the laptop in toward you and keep it close to the display, so a glance across is short.

Use the laptop screen for the things you check but don't stare at: chat, your calendar, a reference document, notes for a call.

With the laptop raised, its own keyboard is out of reach, so you need a separate keyboard and a mouse or trackpad in front of you. Its camera also ends up to one side, which means you look away from it on video calls. If calls are a big part of your day, a camera on top of the main display helps, and posture on long video calls covers the rest.

Setup 2: clamshell mode

If you hardly use the laptop's screen, close it. Apple calls this closed-display mode. Apple's instructions for it have the Mac connected to power, with an external display and a separate keyboard and mouse or trackpad connected; then you close the lid and work on the display alone.

For posture, this is the simplest setup there is: one screen, straight ahead, at the right height, and nothing to turn your head toward. It also clears space on the desk.

The tradeoffs are practical ones. With the lid closed you lose the built-in camera, microphones and Touch ID, so you may need a camera and a microphone or headset for calls. Stand the closed laptop upright in a vertical stand or lay it flat somewhere out of the way.

Setup 3: the laptop below the display

Many people put the laptop open on the desk with the display raised above and behind it. It works if the laptop screen is something you glance at now and then. It is hard on the neck if you use both screens all day, because every look at the laptop is a look down, and every look back up is a nod.

If you stack them like this, make the external display your main screen, keep it as low as it can sit above the laptop's lid, and check that its top edge isn't above eye level. A display set too high makes you tip your head back, which is no more comfortable than tipping it forward.

Match the heights, distances and text

Two screens are easiest on the body when they behave like one.

• Height. Line up both top edges with your eyes or a touch below, so your gaze drops slightly to reach the middle of either screen.
• Distance. About an arm's length, with both screens at a similar distance, so your eyes don't keep refocusing as they move between them. A larger display can sit farther back.
• Text size. If text looks much bigger on one screen than the other, your eyes and your posture adjust every time you switch. In System Settings > Displays, select each display and choose a scaled resolution so text comes out at a similar size on both. Make text bigger on a Mac has more on scaling.
• Brightness. A laptop screen at full brightness beside a dim display, or the other way round, is tiring to move between. Bring them roughly level.
• Glasses. If you wear progressive lenses, you look through the lower part of the lens to read, so a screen set too high makes you tip your head back. Many people with progressives find a lower screen more comfortable. An optometrist can also tell you about glasses made for screen distance.

Tell your Mac where everything is

Once the screens are where you want them, set the Mac up to match.

1. Choose the main display. In System Settings > Displays, select the screen in front of you and, in recent versions of macOS, set Use as to Main display. The main display is where the desktop icons and most new windows first appear.
2. Match the arrangement to the desk. Still in Displays, drag the displays in the arrangement so they sit the way they do in real life (click Arrange first if your version shows that button). If the laptop is on the left, it should be on the left there too, or the pointer will leave the wrong edge.
3. Extend, don't mirror. For two different screens you want them extended, each showing its own content, not mirrored.

Where Notchpals fits

Notchpals works with all of these setups, but where the characters appear depends on which one you pick.

• Laptop open beside or below the display. If the MacBook has a notch, the characters use it even when the external display is your main one. They turn up at the edge of your vision, on the screen you glance at, rather than in the middle of your work.
• Clamshell mode, or a MacBook without a notch. Notchpals draws a black island at the top center of whichever display is set as main, and the characters come out of that. One more reason to make the main display the one in front of you.
• Full screen apps. A full screen app quiets the crew only when it fills the display the characters are using. A full screen video on the other display doesn't count.

The Posture characters earn their place on a two-screen desk, because the drift happens there too: a display nudged lower, a chair that has crept forward, the laptop wandering back to the middle of the desk. Your crew's Posture pick, Sir Pounce for example, drops in now and then with a posture check, and once a day between 2 and 7 PM with a word about the screen:

Sir PounceScreen at eye level, please. I reserve looking down for dogs.

Take it as a prompt to check that both top edges still line up and that you have not slid closer to either screen. Press Done when they do. Later brings it back once, 20 minutes on, which is usually long enough to finish what you were doing and fiddle with a stand.