Asklemmy

I'm in IT/remote administration and have 3 monitors. The left is my main screen and where ticketing/remote windows live, middle screen is email/chats/research, and the right screen is a smaller, portrait oriented monitor for reading long documents (or trying to follow my own code) or I'll throw my security camera feed and YouTube on that one to have visible out of the corner of my eye.

Basically, for all situations, left is communication, center is the application I'm using (game, ide, etc.), right is information (documentation, other resources, guides, or whatever else). What each application is changes based on what I'm working on, but the function is the same essentially always.

Not a dev, but I have 3 monitors on my rig that I use for work and play.

A 24" 1080p as my main monitor for stuff like games or Blender, a smaller 18 and a half inch 720p for secondary stuff like Firefox, Discord/TeamSpeak, and monitoring Cura when the 3d printer is going, and a 21" 1080p Wacom on a monitor arm. The Wacom is kinda outside my field of view unless I'm actively using it, so most of the time it just has a performance monitor running so I can see what's hogging my resources. Having Spotify on there is nice though, the touchscreen/stylus makes running it quick and easy.

I am using only one monitor. It's hard enough to position it to avoid glare from windows and overhead lamps, I cannot imagine doing it with two.

I also have 15 virtual desktops, so there's that.

Not a developer, but I will always use 2 monitors when I can - using the secondary for Outlook: inbox on one side, calendar on the other. I will also swivel this for showing presentations/plans/documents to members of my team in face to face meetings, and will move Zoom windows to in webinars etc it whilst I get on with some actual work on the main monitor.

I started using two so I could more easily remote game with my sibling.

The second one would have their screen stream up, so it was like we were playing split screen co-op back in the day. :)

I do 'light' software development for a SAAS. I use a single ultra wide. It has PiP settings so I can display my personal if I'd like while working, or have everything displayed on the work side as a triple window or dual window setup. The flexibility is great but overall ultra wides are still niche and a general pain in the ass. Good luck getting any game to run more than 90fps when you're pushing a 5k resolution and 240 refresh.

I'm an engineer (a non-IT engineer) and have 4. There is so much ensuring consistency between drawings and documents. I'd like 5 (including the inbuilt one) but graphics card on my high performance company laptop says no.

At least one for file explorer, then other three could be pdf editor, or word, or excel, or internet browser.

I regularly have 4 drawings open, plus another reference, plus windows explorer for file management.

It's never enough. I could totally do with more than 4 screens, I'm already squeezing multiple drawings onto one monitor.

Embedded software developer here. One monitor, virtual workspaces. Because I don't need distractions.

People in here with 2+ monitors, how do you stay focused? Probably it's just me, but I have a hard time getting into the flow after getting interrupted.

If I am...

...gaming, I run the game on one monitor and something like a Wiki for said game on the other.

...doing music I have the DAW on the big screen and everything else on the other.

...working I have my focus point (CLI, IDE, SQL Dev, etc) on the small screen and all the noise (e-mail, chat, browsers, etc) on the big screen. Small screen is better for focus.

Three 27" monitors. Right one is portrait, has Slack and music player split screen, left is email or reference material, center one is for doing the actual work.

I work in a customer facing role but also do graphic design, write books, make music, and occasionally code things.

Massive productivity boost. When I work from my laptop I feel like a grandma.

Two 4k 32 inch monitors and docked laptop screen.
One monitor directly in front which holds code, research or video call.
One monitor to the right mounted vertically and angled towards me that holds a terminal, notes/email/jira or reference documentation for whatever I'm doing on the middle screen.
Laptop is to the left of the main screen and has slack open.

I'm big on tilling window managers, so I tend to do a lot of flipping between workspaces rather than apps, in my mental model. I've gotta use a Mac for work which sucks for tilling, but I can mostly make it work.

Backend dev. I have an ultrawide (like two monitors in one).

Sometimes I need to test the full stack and need a lot (8+) terminals. I try to tile them all on a separate virtual desktop.

Most commonly though, I center my main application and can have two smaller, peripheral applications, one on each side.

When doing full stack, I need a browser, IDE and two terminals, tiled to give more space for the browser.

I use multiple monitors for audio production. My use case is a bit weird since I code Csound and use a DAW, which is unconventional. It's great for having the DAW up on the 4k, and some code or docs or both on the 1080p, 144Hz. If you didn't guess from the mixture of resolutions and frame rates, I've got gaming covered as well.

Truthfully, the 4k probably has the real estate to do all that on its own, but it was the last monitor I bought and why not use the other? I'm too lazy to figure out a setup to hook up the other 1080s I have lying around. (And don't need the space in any case)

Not a software dev but tech is central to my life.

3 monitors for normal use

1 - personal streaming, video meetings

2 - remote business desktop access, main personal browsing window

3 - online chat presence window, personal email client, other

3 monitor gaming

3 monitors for racing simulators and any games that support it (which make sense)

Single monitor gaming

1 - Game related content on left 2 - Game window in center 3 - Game related social media or streaming

3 monitor home labbing

1 machine or app per monitor Triple monitor stare and compare windows GUI / CLI / Monitoring system interface

I didn't realize how extensively I used my monitors until this exercise. Feel better about the spend and space tax related to it.

At my job I use 3 screens. Laptop screen is for Outlook and Teams, the middle screen is for the needed local main application and the right screen is for remote server connections. Having just 2 screens or even only 1 screen would lower my productivity.

At home I'm a single screen user, but its a 4K 28" screen and large enough to hold all my crap.

I have two monitors plus my laptop screen. I keep my IDE open on one, my browser open on another, and my terminal open on the last one. It may not boost my productivity a lot each day, but saving maybe a minute every hour adds up.

It’s much easier to move my mouse to the left than it is to switch windows. When I’m not at home and I have to code on just my laptop, I do miss the extra monitors.

I do a lot of video editing. 3 monitors all the same size. Right is main edited output. Center is all my editing tools. Left is file management, chat, stock footage, etc.

I'm a 3 monitor person as well. 34" ultrawide as my main with two 24" widescreens side-to-side immediately above it. I use it for work and personal use.
Ultrawide has my main programs for work: internet browsers and job specific programs get about 60% of the real estate on the left, while pdf's, and other less essential programs go to the right 40% of the screen.
The top left monitor gets Teams, Excel docs, or auxiliary browsers.
Top right gets email and media (YouTube, Spotify, etc) or any overfill if I'm dealing with a particularly cluttered job.

For personal, ultrawide is obviously used for games, movies, etc, while top left has task manager, MSI Afterburner, and Throttlestop (I run a laptop). And the top right has Discord.

1. Teams, Outlook
2. VNC/Second virtual machine monitor if needed
3. Virtual Machine

What is a rainbow computer?

Single large 48” 4K gang here. It’s like 4x 24”+ 1080p monitors in a square with no bezels.

spaces > monitors

portability > exactly what I want

I have three monitors. Middle is an ultra wide with the tests and another window of stuff (the app, data, etc). Right is a 1080 with docs. Left is a 1080 with the code in question.

At work I have two monitors. One for input (my IDE for programming) and one for output ( the browser to watch changes for my react app).

At home I bought the 49 in. Samsung and have three monitors. Third is normally the log output.

Been doing it for years as a sysadmin. Great for documentation and multiple terminal windows. Interrupting programs (email, messengers) on the small screen so they are easy to review but out of direct line of sight.

Small screen makes it easy to screen share with others. They can seen the whole thing at a reasonable size.

Not an IC anymore but my workhorses for the better part of 13 years were 13” laptops. Nice and simple. I don’t get the multiple monitor thing honestly.

I use two monitors: one in landscape orientation and the other vertical. I usually keep console windows in the vertical one and that's where I write code. Typically its code editing on the left side and a few console windows with compiler/server output on the right. Landscape gets firefox web UI: current app, time clock or notes window.

So that's two workspaces. I have additional monitor-level workspaces I can flip to: #3 for chrome (google products), #4 for signal/thunderbird, #5 for keepassxc, #6 for an additional set of console windows for a second project, or for other things like system upgrades and etc.

I run pretty much the same workspaces on my laptop with only one monitor, the main difference is having to flip back and forth more. Its a little more mental overhead. On the dual monitor rig I like the vertical orientation for my code window, I can see 2x the amount of code at once.

Overall I'd say the productivity boost from multiple monitors is low to mid. Its nice to have but I can still get work done on a laptop screen. That said I do most of my work on the dual setup.

Loads of data sciency stuff - one monitor for normal text editing/terminal work, another for accessing remote environments, and a third for a combo of work comms and music.

When not sciencing, I won't lie, there's a lot of Path of Exile with PoB on one screen and a podcast on the third.

One monitor for moodboard, another for materials, tablet monitor for working.

Software dev here, and I'm pretty confident that 4 is the ideal number, as long as you have window snapping to split them in half:

Left (inputs): half current ticket, half whatever documentation you need

Main (work): IDE, half test code, half actual code

Right (outputs): half terminal, half web page (frontend) or postman (backend)

Bottom (comms): Smaller laptop screen dedicated to slack / email

I have 2 monitors. My primary is ultra wide for gaming and the secondary is discord, Spotify, etc. so I can view messages and stuff without leaving my full screen game.

For work? I just use my Mac monitor like a neanderthal. Idk why but I don't really find multiple monitors helps me work faster.