workaround: single external monitor without sleep

I'm sure many of you are in the same shoes as me, and have a Macbook that you'd like to close and connect to an external monitor, but without putting it to sleep.

InsomniaX allows you to disable sleep in Mac laptops. This lets you plug in an external monitor and close the laptop without it ever going to sleep. OS X does turn off the laptop monitor once it's closed. No broken downloads, no interrupted chats. Great. There is a catch though. The laptop display, though turned off hardware-wise, is still recognized in software.

There is a solution to that catch, if it bothers you: go to system preferences -> displays, and click "detect displays" -- OS X will notice that the laptop is closed, and disable the display for you, getting you to the state that you would have been in had you followed http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86286

No warranties implied, but this did work for me. Hope it helps somebody.

 

Would this program allow you to run the computer from a single external display with the MBP's lid open, but the LCD off?

 

yes, the same as the official way of doing it: you can just open the macbook up after you've got the external display going and it won't turn the internal one back on. the only difference would be, this way, you don't have to put the macbook to sleep in the process.