MacOS – way to “split” one display so that it treated as two separate screens

displaymacos

Is there any app or hack which can split a monitor into multiple screens? So for instance, a 1920×1080 display could be treated by the operating system as though there were two 960×1080 screens connected instead.

Best Answer

There is No: True Multi-Monitor Support for a Single Display

There is no way to get the OS to treat a single display as more than one display.

You Can: Fill Defined Sections of your Screen with an App

You can get very close to what you are looking for with a tool like SizeUp or Divvy. They will allow you to fill sections of your screen with an app. Halves, quarters, etc.

Update: Answer still largely accurate as of 7/2020

After many years a friend mentioned he came across this post. Here is an updated response:

You still can't do true Linux-like window management or split a large screen into multiple monitors. Mac OS has added to it's Spaces feature including the ability to have fractional spaces (two apps side by side) which is really just a first party version of the third part solution mentioned above. It is still very limited as a window management system and generally less useful than any of the third party tools mentioned in this thread so far.

You can find a pretty thorough walk through of Spaces over at Apple Insider.

Also, today I use Moom (as mentioned by other commenters below). I find it to be the best modern answer to this question.

Related Solutions

MacOS – Fastest way to split a video file into two

You might also be able to do this using Quicktime X. Open the movie, then choose Edit -> Trim... Trim away the second part of the movie file and do a save as to get the first part in a separate file. Re-open the original file and trim away the first part, save as to get the second part in a separate file.

I've only been able to try it with a 5 minute long movie, which was quick enough, but I'm unsure of how quickly it'll work with a 2 hour movie.

Way to Split one 42 Inch TV into Multiple Displays or Virtual Displays

You wouldn't necessarily get "sharper" resolution - splitting a 1080p HDTV into two monitors side-by-side would result in two 960x1080 displays:

+----------------+    +--------+--------+
|                |    |        |        |
|                | -> |        |        |
|                | -> |        |        |
|                |    |        |        |
+----------------+    +--------+--------+

Is that what you're looking for? Despite the admonishments in your question, I don't think that's really what you're looking for. You'll get the exact same thing by just resizing your FCP windows to take up half the screen and putting both of them on the same screen. (You're stuck with the 1920x1080 pixels your display has any way you slice it.)

In (more-direct) answer to your question: no, I don't think such programs exist.

Note: I'm not familiar with Final Cut Pro, so I'm assuming it's multi-screen behavior is implemented with multiple windows.