If your MacBook’s plugged into an external monitor, you’ve probably looked for a setting that turns off just the laptop screen without closing the lid. I did. Mine sits under a 27-inch display, lit up all day, showing some random window I dragged there by accident, or nothing at all.
There’s no setting for it. macOS lets you rearrange your displays and mirror them, but not turn it off.
The quick answer. Closing the lid works, but you lose the MacBook’s built-in peripherals, Touch ID and the webcam included, and some cooling performance too. To keep the lid open while turning off the internal screen you need a third-party app to do it properly. Below are five different methods that let you do this, with their pros and cons, and the one I built and use. Three are free, two cost money.
Method 1: Close the lid (clamshell mode)
This is the answer you’ll get on most forums. Plug in an external monitor, connect a keyboard and mouse, close the lid, and the monitor becomes your only screen.
By closing the lid you give up more than the screen. Touch ID sits on the keyboard, so unlocking goes back to typing a password. Video calls need a separate camera. And the speakers and mic are working through a closed case. It also runs hotter. A MacBook Pro exhausts through the hinge and a fanless Air through the chassis, so you throttle sooner under heavy load.
It also wants power. Close the lid on battery and the Mac goes to sleep. You can override it. sudo pmset -a disablesleep 1 stops the Mac sleeping with the lid closed, and sudo pmset -a disablesleep 0 puts it back. It is not in the pmset man page, which is usually how Apple signals an interface it does not support, and it applies on battery too, not just at your desk. Leave it on and your Mac is still running when you pull it out of your bag, so enable it only when you need it.
Method 2: Turn brightness all the way down
The obvious move is to drop the built-in display’s brightness all the way down. On some Macs that isn’t off. macOS keeps a floor under the backlight, so the panel ends up dimmer but still lit.
Even where it does go fully dark, macOS still counts it as a working display. Windows open on it, your cursor slides onto it, the Dock can end up down there instead of on your monitor, and notifications land on a screen you can’t read.
Method 3: Mirror your displays
Combine that last method with mirroring and you get close. Both screens show the same picture, so there is only one desktop, and nothing can get stranded on the MacBook panel, no windows, no cursor, no notifications. Turn the brightness down on top of that and the panel goes as dark as your Mac lets it.
None of it sticks, though. You set it up every time you sit down and undo it every time you leave.
Method 4: A full display-management app
Doing that pairing properly, in one click, is what the display-management apps are for. Two do it well, and I would point you at either one before pitching you mine.
BetterDisplay has a Disconnect Display feature that removes a display from the layout and puts it to sleep. It can also dim a panel all the way to black, so it covers both approaches. It needs the Pro license, $21.99. On Apple Silicon it’s fully supported from macOS Ventura onward. On Intel Macs the same feature is marked experimental and can cause problems. BetterDisplay does a lot, including virtual screens, resolution overrides, HDR control and per-display brightness. Disconnect Display is one item on a long menu.
Lunar has BlackOut, which does the same job, plus Auto BlackOut to fire it the moment a monitor is connected. Lunar is primarily a brightness and HDR tool, and BlackOut is one feature inside it. A lifetime Pro license is $23.
If you’ve already got either one, use the feature you paid for. If all you wanted was your internal display off, you’re installing a display suite to press one button in it.
Method 5: A single-purpose app (what I use)
That’s why I built Unlit. It’s a menu bar app with one job. It turns off your MacBook’s internal display while an external monitor is connected, with the lid open.
The whole setup:
- Plug in your external monitor. Unlit won’t let you hide the built-in display when there’s no other screen connected.
- Click the menu bar icon and choose Turn Internal Display OFF, or press Shift-Option-D from anywhere. The MacBook panel goes dark and the external monitor is untouched.
- To bring it back, use the same shortcut, Restore Internal Display in the menu, or simply unplug your monitor.
You can skip step 2 entirely. Tick Automatically turn off internal display when an external display is connected in the menu panel, and the MacBook screen goes dark the moment you plug the monitor in.
Unlit does this two ways, and you can pick which one to use.
Standard Dim is the default. It makes the internal panel a mirror of your external display, forces its picture to black, and drops its backlight to zero. Your monitor keeps its own resolution. The MacBook panel goes dark, and because it’s mirroring rather than extending, nothing can land on it.
Hardware Disconnect is the advanced one. It calls the private macOS API that powers the panel down, the same way unplugging a monitor would. The internal display stops drawing power, and your Mac stops rendering frames to a screen you are not looking at. Since it’s a private API, a future macOS update could break it. Standard Dim is always there to go back to.
Either way, unplug the external monitor and your internal screen comes back on its own. And it remembers where you left it, so the panel is still off after sleep and wake, or after you close the lid and open it again.
Unlit vs BetterDisplay vs Lunar
If you came here looking for a BetterDisplay or Lunar alternative rather than a how-to, this part is for you.
All three turn the panel off the same two ways, so what you’re really choosing is how many extra features you want.
BetterDisplay and Lunar are display suites, and they’re better at that than I have any intention of being. Virtual screens, resolution overrides, HDR, per-display brightness, DDC control. Turning off your internal display is one small part of what they do. Unlit doesn’t do any of the rest, and it isn’t going to.
It’s cheaper too, $7.99 against $21.99 for BetterDisplay Pro and $23 for Lunar Pro. All three are one-time purchases.
So if you already own one of them, or you want the whole toolkit, you don’t need mine.
Which method should you pick
| Option | Lid open | Touch ID and webcam | Panel goes dark | Windows can’t land on it | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Close the lid | No | No | Yes | Yes | Free, plus a keyboard and mouse |
| Brightness to zero | Yes | Yes | Not always | No | Free |
| Mirror displays | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Free |
| BetterDisplay | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | $21.99 |
| Lunar | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | $23 |
| Unlit | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | $7.99 |
If you already own BetterDisplay or Lunar, use what you already have. If you don’t, and you want your built-in display off without giving up the keyboard, trackpad, Touch ID and webcam, and without the extra heat, Unlit is $7.99, one time, with a 14-day trial that needs no email and no credit card.