According to the official specs listed by Apple, Apple’s new M1 powered Mac mini, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro will only support anywhere between 1-2 external displays. This is versus the Intel-powered variants that can support more, but is the limit of 1-2 displays true? It turns out not really.
According to a video uploaded to YouTube by Ruslan Tulupov, he has managed to connect as many as six external displays to Apple’s new M1 powered Mac computers. How he managed to achieve this was by using DisplayLink adapters to connect all the displays together and to the M1 Mac computers, obviously surpassing the officially supported amount of displays.
As for performance given that the Macs would need to power multiple displays at once, it seems that these M1 Macs held their own and depending on the adapter you use, you might notice some dip in framerates, but otherwise it seems to be doing just fine. From what we can tell in the video, it does seem to take up quite a bit of RAM, but it’s possible that this is because multiple apps and windows were open at once.
Is this an ideal setup? Hardly, but in case you’re used to a dual or triple display setup with your Macs, then perhaps this could be an unofficial hack that you could look into. Hopefully in the future, newer Apple Silicon powered Mac computers will be able to support additional displays.
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