Endless years of frustration with BetterDisplay and Sidecar

[dpkroh]

If only I could get back the endless hours of my life I have wasted on the promise of BetterDisplay. An app with amazing potential, and occasional wow, but far and away the most unreliable frustrating app that I keep torturing myself by clinging to its potential, instead of admitting the reality like I am now.

IMO BD desperately needs a grossly simplified version focused exclusively on reliability and ease of use

(1) When an external display is plugged in, there are only 2 things a user should have to input for any external display... diagonal display measurement, and native resolution width times height (if this information can not be read directly from the hardware)
(2) Physical Arrangement, should be set and forget, always. It should automatically survive reboots, and settings changes in the BD app. Unless a user wants a different arrangement, this setting should never again have to be reset a second time.
(3) Virtual Display, is not a concept that should even exist for basic users. If it is needed such as for sidecar in portrait mode, BD should handle this behind the scenes. Merge the virtual and physical display it mirrors to into a single "display" representation (as it can do when force mirroring is on). 99% of people don't care or want to know about a "virtual" display. Just make sidecar work in portrait with a simple (rotate) feature, that is set once, and reliable forever. If the box is checked the display works in portrait mode. If not checked it works in landscape mode. Just like the built in OS system settings for external displays. Curious here, why does the "Sense" orientation feature not work for sidecar? Would be great if it could.
(4) automatically make a basic set of reasonable resolutions available as in the OS for the built in dispay. Don't force the users to configure all sorts of parameters around available resolutions - this is NOT a feature, this is a frustration for most. sidecar forces a single resolution in landscape mode - a key benefit of BD is to have a few more resolutions for sidecar. The only other simplified option for resolutions, should be infinitely flexible. Not hidden in settings. A tick box that reveals a percentage slide, right beside the limited choice basic resolution settings. Not buried in submenus that require configuration just to even exist, never mind to locate and complicated attempts to make it work - and hope it works again after a reboot or other change.
(5) A simple tickbox to harmonize UI and text size among all currently connected displays. No need to form display groups with endless option and activation rules. Just a simple (on/off) toggle, to sync UI size among all connected monitors or not.

Do the very simple 5 above things right and reliably and you will have 100x more customers who love this program and want to buy it. Thanks for reading my rant. I have been loving / hating BD for years. Yes I have pro.

I am thinking of starting a BetterDisplay Users anonymous support group for people like me, who can't seem to give up on the "promise" of BD, despite the endless frustrations. It's like a toxic relationship now. LOL. In my head, as I try endlessly once again to make it work like it did last time, the the lyrics from "The OffSpring" song "Self Esteem" come to mind "Well I know I'm being used, that's okay because I like the abuse" LOL.

There is something seriously wrong when I spend more time on my Mac trying to get BD working again with my iPad, than I do on all other tasks combined..... this has been going on for years... please SIMPLIFY and make RELIABLE... this will be far more useful and orders of magnitude appealing to more people than the endless feature bloat focus it has now

[waydabber]

Thanks for the feedback - you are right, some features should be simplified or made more straightforward.

It's not that easy though as all users want some other feature to be prominent, easily accessible or automated, considering all other app features just unneeded bloats (depending on their specific favored use-case :)). All these impulses then cancel each other out. :) Also, there are technical limitations why things can't be that simple (like simply hiding a virtual screen or having same fixed arrangement "just right" not considering changing displays etc).

But I understand the concern and I am of course trying to making things more reliable and simpler (considering the inherent "workaround" nature of many of these stuff). :)

[dpkroh]

Thank-you for entertaining my rant. I really do like what the app can do, but I feel like I am constantly fighting it and / or the MacOS it interacts with. Sidecar seems particularly problematic and challenging to keep consistent.

One of the use cases that seems to consistently throw things off, is trying to simply check and uncheck "rotated" for when I want to switch between sidecar rotated / landscape. If only it were so simple LOL. Other stuff seems to break everytime I do this. I'm also find that the "configuration protection - arrangement" option doesn't seem to work. A simple resolution change from the app trying to match UI sizes (using groups) still throws off display arrangement every time.

I'm tempted to just get a USB-C portable monitor, as I know those work more reliably, but that would be yet another gadget to purchase and lug around, when the iPad should be able to serve the purpose.

One has to wonder why years after Apple released sidecar, it still does not natively offer and choices of different UI scalings, and still does not offer portrait orientation.

I don't doubt that making the app perform reliably is quite a challenge. I do appreciate all the "features" but wonder if a super simplified with a few core features version could exist alongside a fully functional version?

Thanks again

[dpkroh]

I'm still deep in frustration trying to enable the basic ability to alternate between virtual landscape or portrait modes for sidecar.

Sometimes I want to use portrait orientations and, sometimes I want to use landscape orientations of the iPad Pro M5 11 inch, with my MacBook Air M5 15 inch.

I have typically been setting up the virtual displays as 3:2 aspect ratios mirroring their stream to the sidecar iPad. This gives the ability to choose nearly any flexible resolution, as opposed to clicking on the sidecar display during virtual display setup. The actual aspect ratio has limited resolution settings due to the 11 inch M5 iPad Pro's problematic 605:417 precise aspect ratio with its native 2420 x 1668 resolution.

As soon as I try to have configurations for both landscape and portrait virtual screens, I run into problems. I can confirm that the iPadOS "rotate display lock" setting is unlocked. I have tried it locked as well, doesn't seem to matter.

I have also tried several times clearing all BD app settings back to default using application -> reset app settings and rebooting. I have been able to get portrait orientation to work fine, when setting it up first. But as soon as I try to toggle the rotated display option, or try setting up a second landscape orientation virtual display, portrait orientations get messed up.

Can you provide suggestions? Here is what I have tried

1. It seems the most reasonable way to be able to switch between portrait and landscape, would be to have just one virtual iPad display, and toggle the BD "rotated display" setting on and off. This is how it works with most OS settings using external displays.

I can get landscape to work well, but when I try flip to portrait, I get letter boxed portrait, like a typical portrait video from a smartphone, displayed on a home TV. I do confirm BD shows the virtual display to be actively streaming to the physical iPad. So, I then try to go to virtual display -> stream virtual screen, and try to use the rotation icons. Nothing happens.

Neither the rotation icons nor the vertical / horizontal invert icons seem to have any affect. Sigh. The only times those icons have ever worked for me is after completely resetting the app settings of BD, and first setting up a portrait orientation virtual display. It seems once a landscape virtual display is also associated to the iPad, those icons stop working.

I do also go back to MacOS layout settings, as they seem to frequently get changed, and ensure the MacOS settings match physical reality, and the virtual display shows immediately adjacent to the built-in display, as opposed to the iPad shown as between the built in and virtual display. This to ensure the cursor always goes from the built in display, immediately to the virtual display.

2. I have tried creating both a virtual landscape and a virtual portrait orientation. I disable auto connect, so I can choose which virtual display to use, and they don't interfere with each other. Once again, I can make one work, typically landscape, but not the other. I do ensure that only 1 of the portrait or virtual defined displays is active. I also confirm that the BD interface tells me the chosen virtual display is streaming to the iPad.

Note that I have disabled "auto connect" so that I can manually ensure only 1 of the virtual displays is active, and I conform BD shows the chosen virtual display shows as streaming to the iPad.

Any thoughts / suggestions? Many thanks.

[waydabber]

Yeah, Apple's Sidecar app is buggy, it will work reliably only when the iPad is in landscape mode and orientation-locked. With that, you should be able to change the orientation of the virtual screen + change the virtual screen stream's rotation. Alternatively, you can create two separate virtual screens, one portrait, one landscape.