MacBook Pro M3 Pro not recognizing two external displays using HP Thunderbolt Dock 120W G2 Docking Station

Polyglot_D3V wrote:

Hello,

I am working to get my HP G2 dock to work with 2 external monitors. Did you install any drivers other than DisplayLink Manager?

If you have a Mac whose specifications say that it can support all of your monitors, I'd think that you would want to avoid using DisplayLink and other "workaround" solutions.

I believe that Mac notebooks that use {M1/M2/M3} Pro and {M1/M2/M3} Max chips can all drive two (in the case of the Max models, more) displays with the lid open. If you want to connect two displays to the same Mac host port, that device needs to be a Thunderbolt device (e.g., Thunderbolt dock) – so there is a wider data highway to carry video data to it, before it splits the data off into two streams for two monitors.

Mac notebooks that use base M1, M2, or M3 chips cannot do that. Most Mac notebooks using base Apple Silicon chips can drive only one external display. The M3 MacBook Airs can drive a second display when, and only when, their lids are closed. The 14" MacBook Pros that use the base M3 chip will reportedly get that feature via software update, but the release date for that update is unknown.

kviuf wrote:

Dear Grant, I have the same problem, but I have the Mac Air M3 with two USB-C connectors. Can I buy a USB-C male to Mini display adapter or display adapter and get it to work ? Chat GPT says that M3 can run two external screens on the G2 dock 😝

ChatGPT is not a reliable, definitive source for anything. There was a case where lawyers using that program, or one like it, presented a fictitious machine-generated "legal case" reference to a court. The judge wasn't amused and imposed a fine on the lawyers. (They were lucky that's all the judge did.)

Apple's specifications say that the M3 MacBook Airs can drive one external display with the lid open, or two with the lid closed. This part of the specification is the same for the 13" and 15" models.

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Simultaneously supports full native resolution on the built-in display at 1 billion colors and:

• One external display with up to 6K resolution at 60Hz
• Close the MacBook Air lid to use a second external display with up to 5K resolution at 60Hz

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If you are using a Retina scaling mode, I believe the "up to 6K" or "up to 5K" limit applies to the resolution of the internal canvas. Thus you could run a second display at native 3840x2160 (4K USB-C display) but not in Retina modes with "UI looks like" resolutions exceeding 2560x1440 pixels. (That translates to a 5K drawing canvas.)

forget about two displays off that Windows-only Dock, and add an additional cable for the second display.

what model MacBook Air EXACTLY, what display size, what year, what processor M1, M2, M3 {plain, PRO, MAX}

do you need to use the mouse on this display?

do you need to get full Motion Video on this display, or ONLY slow-to-change data like stock quotes and spreadsheets?

built-in display open or closed?

also, the HP G2 is a FAMILY of docking stations for Windows computers. Most do not work adequately on a Mac. which model EXACTLY are you thinking of using?

Dear Grant, I have the same problem, but I have the Mac Air M3 with two USB-C connectors. Can I buy a USB-C male to Mini display adapter or display adapter and get it to work ? Chat GPT says that M3 can run two external screens on the G2 dock 😝

great, you persisted and got it to work!

Hello,

I am working to get my HP G2 dock to work with 2 external monitors. Did you install any drivers other than DisplayLink Manager?