Splashtop Wired XDisplay
For those of us working from home, sometimes, wouldn’t you like a second screen on your laptop?
Often, we may have a bigger screen on the office computer and making a remote connection to it might be frustratingly limited with only a laptop screen to work on. It’s no secret that we like the functionality of Splashtop Business.
Splashtop Wired Xdisplay is a free utility from Splashtop. Using it you can run your phone or tablet as a second screen using the USB charging cable!
How does it work?
You need to install the app on both the PC and the tablet. In this case I am going to go though the setup to an IOS device, my wife’s iPad in fact. Android is similar in its setup but instead of the App store you use the Google Play store.
Note the message. If you don’t have it, you must have iTunes installed too. More on that in a moment.
On the tablet, open the app store and search for Splashtop. Locate the Splashtop Xdisplay app and install it.
OK, ready to go. Let’s recap what you need installed.
- Splashtop Xdisplay installed on the PC / laptop
- Apple iTunes installed on the PC / Laptop
- Splashtop Xdisplay installed on the tablet.
- The cable to connect your tablet to your PC
Let’s go!
Splashtop Xdisplay will automatically run in the background on the PC anyway so let’s open the app on the tablet.
You’ll get this image on the screen in a nice friendly blue as it waits to connect.
And keep waiting….. Not opening? Launch iTunes on the PC and suddenly you have your display showing on both your pc and tablet!! As soon as the connection happens, you can close iTunes.
So, it was a little fiddly to get here but now we have your desktop showing on both tablet and PC. Now, let’s make it really useful.
By default, Windows will duplicate your display, we need to change it to extend it. This way, you can work with two screens.
Right click your Windows desktop and select Display Settings
Your display settings will probably look like this.
Scroll down this window and you’ll see that under Multiple Displays it says Duplicate these displays. Click the pull down menu to change it.
Select Extend these Displays, the screen will flicker but if everything looks ok, select the option to keep these settings. Scroll back to the top again. The display should look like this. Press the identify button and each screen will show a number. In my case the PC is screen one, the tablet is screen two.
Finally, lets get the screens in the right place. Let’s say your tablet works better if its on the left of the PC. You want to change the display settings so that Windows knows this and its very simple. Click the number two screen in display settings and drag it to the left of number one screen and click apply. That’s it! Now when you move the mouse to the left of the screen it will appear on the tablet screen.
Now, you’re working on two screens. You can slide some of your work to the second screen, You can even use the touch display on the tablet and turn it around from portrait to landscape and back again.
Splashtop XDisplay is a simple way to get the most of the tech around you and make working easy. Unfortunately, my wife just took the iPad back to play Bejewelled!