A portable second screen for your MacBook, using the tablet you own

A laptop makes you choose: your neck or your wrists

Cornell University's ergonomics guide puts it bluntly: with a laptop, "if the keyboard is in an optimal position for the user, the screen isn't". Keep your hands comfortable and you look down.

How far down? In a 2018 motion-capture study of 30 people, using a laptop bent the neck about 11 degrees more than sitting at a desktop computer. It's the posture you know from a hotel desk at the end of a long day.

Give your eyes a screen of their own

For laptop users, the UK's Health and Safety Executive suggests a separate keyboard and mouse so the screen can be raised, and lists a "display screen separate from the laptop". Few people pack a monitor. Most already pack a tablet.

Wing Display turns it into a real second display for your MacBook. Stand it up in landscape, put the thing you read most on it, a document, a call, your sources, and keep typing on the MacBook. Windows drag across like to any monitor, and it's free over Wi-Fi.

Set up a travel desk in a minute

• One main screen, one side screen. Canada's occupational health centre advises putting the screen you use most directly in front of you, the other to one side at an angle, both about an arm's length away.
• Lift it. A tablet stand, or a few books under a propped-up case, brings it nearer eye level.
• Tell your Mac where it is. In System Settings → Displays, drag the tablet's display to the side it sits on, so the pointer crosses where you expect.

Connect it

1. Install both apps

   Download Wing Display for Mac and click Start in the menu bar. Then install the Android tablet app.

2. Tap Connect

   On the same Wi-Fi, your Mac appears in the tablet app. Tap Connect, and click Allow on your Mac the first time.

On hotel or café Wi-Fi that keeps devices apart, use your tablet's hotspot instead: why hotel Wi-Fi hides your tablet, and the fix.

What it costs

The Mac app and the second screen over Wi-Fi or your tablet's hotspot are free to use. Pro adds touch, the pen and a USB cable connection: $2.99 a month or $24.99 a year in US dollars, through Google Play, with 14 days free for first-time subscribers. Compare the plans.

Questions