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I've just bought an mini-display to VGA today and attached my monitor to my Macbook Pro to use as an extended screen. Unfortunately the highest resolution available for my second monitor is not high enough to my taste and things do look a tiny bit stretched and blurry.

Under my Linux box I had the same problem. I then found a guide that allowed me to set more or less any resolution I wanted through xrandr commands.

I'm looking for a similar "hack" for my Mac OS. Google wasn't of much help on this so I'm turning to SuperUser.

How can you set a custom resolution for a second monitor under Mac OS?

EDIT:

I've followed the advice given below. I've installed SetResX but it still doesn't offer the resolution I want. I then look at com.apple.Boot.plist as suggested and here is the content:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Kernel Flags</key>
    <string></string>
</dict>
</plist>

I don't know how I can edit this to set a custom screen resolution for the second extended monitor. Tried Google and found one guy asking the same thing but with no answer.

I know for a fact my Macbook Pro and my second extended screen can support the resolution I want (1920x1200) as it's my configuration for my Linux partition.

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  • Can you let us know which Model (month/year) of MacBook Pro you have and which version of OS X you're running? – toomanyairmiles Jun 23 '14 at 19:04
  • @toomanyairmiles I have 13-inch mid-2012 MacBook Pro with OS X 10.9.2. Graphics is Intel HD Graphics 4000 1024mb, quite crappy graphics but like I said I can definitely set that resolution on my Linux partition with no issues. Thanks for trying to help it's so frustrating trying to work on GimpShop with everything distorted! – user2018084 Jun 23 '14 at 19:10
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First try option clicking on "Scaled" in display preferences, this should display all available resolutions instead of the top 3.

If that still does not allow you to select the resolution you are looking for you have these options:

Paid software - SwitchResX

Free software - SetResX

You can also edit the hardware profile for the external monitor in /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot.plist

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  • Thanks for trying to help me! I've updated my question with some more info after trying your solutions! Please let me know if you know how to configure com.apple.Boot.plist – user2018084 Jun 25 '14 at 2:33

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