The Apple Vision Pro makes a good 4K virtual display for a Mac

Yesterday I told you how to use an Apple Vision Pro as a Mac display. Today I’ll tell you how useful I found this feature. 

I won’t be selling my Studio Display anytime soon and replacing it with a Vision Pro as my 16-inch MacBook Pro’s external display, but I’ll certainly consider taking both the spatial computer and laptop on business trips so I can work with a super-big display. 

This set-up works well, and Mac display sharing is impressive. It’s like having a 40-inch + display on which to work. Features like Handoff and Continuity work flawlessly. You can copy on your Mac and paste in visionOS. And this allows you to use a mouse when working with a Vision Pro; for some reason, there’s no mouse support natively on the spatial computer. 

If you’re using an Apple Silicon Mac paired with a Vision Pro, you’ll have a 4K virtual display. Not 5K like with the Studio Pro, but still pretty impressive resolution. 

You should note that you can’t have multiple Mac monitors “floating” in space in front of you. With a ginormous virtual display floating before my eyes, I don’t mind that a problem, but you’ve been warned. 

Apple promotes the fact that the Vision Pro is intended for use with Mac laptops. However, you can use an Apple Silicon Macs, as well. It may just take a little more fiddling. As Apple mentions in a support document, “If you have a compatible Mac desktop computer, or you don’t see the Connect button above your Mac laptop, you can start Mac Virtual Display in Control Center.”

As I said, I’m not planning to use the Vision Pro as my main external computer during my work days running Apple World Today. But it’s nice to know I could if I wanted.