You can make a difference in the Apple Support Community!

When you sign up with your Apple Account, you can provide valuable feedback to other community members by upvoting helpful replies and User Tips.

Login screen appears on extended monitor

When I upgraded my 2014 mini to a 2023 M2 Pro mini with a new Studio Display; I used the 27" Thunderbolt Display, that I had used with the 2014 mini, as an extended display for the M2 Pro mini. I used an Apple Thunderbolt 3/USB-C to miniDP adapter with the TB/miniDP cable to connect to the TB Display and the TB3/USB-C cable that came with the Studio Display to connect to it. I have two admin accounts as users, myself as primary Admin and my wife as a secondary Admin. The Login screen for my account would appear on the extended screen at startup, restarts, and also when waking from sleep after logging out. I searched the Community forums and found this post that helped me resolve this issue.


"Login screen appears on wrong monitor - Apple Community


Below is a Reply that the Author posted on July 4, 2022 to his original post/question on May 25, 2022:

"A user in an another forum gave me the final hint to this Login-Riddle (thanks again Maniacintosh). Like him I am using two accounts on my Mac Studio. An Adminaccount for maintenance and a Standarduser which I work the most time with. So I confiugred my monitors just with the Standardaccount.

The solution was actually very simple: I had to login to my Adminaccount to configure the monitors the same way as in the Standardaccount and that's it. After a fresh boot or a reboot the login screen finally appears on my configured main monitor."


In my case I needed to login to the second Admin user account and configure the Display settings to be the same as in the primary Admin user account. Even creating a 'test' standard user account had the login screen on the extended monitor until all users were configured the same.

Even a phone call to Apple Support online and a trip to an Apple Store Genius Bar did not help resolve this issue. In fairness, we (the experts & I) didn't think about considering the another user account as the source of the 'conflict'.


Mac mini (M2 Pro, 2023)

Posted on Oct 17, 2024 5:36 PM

Reply
1 reply

Oct 18, 2024 2:48 PM in response to LogicalAnalysisandDiagnostics

Update & addendum: Well I posted this before I verified that it actually worked.

Yes the other Admin account's Display Settings configuration was different than my Admin Display Settings, and I did attempt to make them the same or similar, but to no avail.

Perhaps it is time to do a clean install of the OS from Recovery and then allow iCloud backup to restore my data. There appears to be too much 'detritus' from my Time Machine Backups from my 2014 Mac mini.

Login screen appears on extended monitor

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple Account.