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ajpen/studio_display_windows.md

Created August 19, 2023 18:51
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How to fix a black screen on the studio display with a Thunderbolt 4 Nvidia dedicated graphics windows Laptop
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studio_display_windows.md

If you have a Windows laptop with thunderbolt 4 and an Nvidia Dedicated Graphics card (I tested with a RTX 3050 ti), you might get a black screen when you plug in the Apple Studio Display into the thunderbolt 4 port of your laptop.
Assuming that your laptop's thunderbolt port graphics is handled by the Nvidia card, it might be that your Nvidia card is sending a DP1.4 signal over the thunderbolt 4 port, but still sending a native 5K resolution signal to the Studio Display. The studio display doesn't support native 5K over DP1.4, only 4K. You might have seen this online somewhere and tried to change the display resolution with windows settings, to no avail. The thing is, you need to do it from the Nvidia control panel.

Steps

  1. Plug in the studio display using the thunderbolt 3 cable it came with into the thunderbolt 4 port on your laptop (the GPU one). Listen for the USB plugged in chime coming from your studio display; this means it was recognized by the laptop. You can also check the Dell Thunderbolt settings on your laptop to confirm that the studio display is connected over thunderbolt.

  2. Open the Nvidia Control Panel. You'll see in the side menu, a menu group called "display". Click the "change resolution" setting under the "display" menu group. Now, you should see the studio display listed. Select it, then under "change resolution" change the resolution to the 4K uption (3840 x 2160, or just pick the option below the currently selected one).

  3. Finally, click "apply", and you should see your laptop screen flash then both screens turn on.

This is what worked for me when my laptop with dedicated graphics and thunderbolt still didn't "plug and play" with the studio display. I imagine something similar might be necessary for a non-Nvidia dedicated GPU.

Optional

If you want to use your laptop docked and only the studio display is on, you might have some problems. Closing your laptop might switch the resolution back to the default 5K. To fix this, you can enable narrator. then fiddle with it until you can replicate the steps above with a blank screen. Holding Caps Lock and using the left and right arrow keys is how you can have the narrator read the next/prev text. It'll say whether its a button or menu, etc. Just try it with the screen on before trying with the screen off.

Good luck!

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