Dell monitor picture-by-picture hardware control/detected as a different display

[peterjcole]

Hi, really liking all the new features, the new controls around PiP and the hardware controls are really useful!

I have a slightly annoying issue: I've implemented a hardware control toggle to turn on and off picture-by-picture mode on my Dell U3219Q. It's working, but when picture-by-picture is switched on, BetterDisplay seems to think it's looking at a completely different display, meaning I have two monitors in the settings and causing weirdness with the toggle switch

For some reason, when picture-by-picture is off, the 'periodically read and update current value' seems to be working, but not when it's on, despite identical configuration on both monitors. This means when I want to disable picture-by-picture, I have to first enable it, then disable it, on the monitor entry for picture-by-picture, which takes quite a bit of time because when enabling, even though it is already enabled, the monitor goes black and searches for signal sources etc.

However, once it is disabled, the monitor entry for non-PBP automatically updates the toggle to be switched off, indicating that reading the value periodically is working, but only when PBP is switched off.

Here's a screenshot of the DDC control configuration, which is identical for both 'monitors':

I don't want to introduce loads of complexity to the app e.g. merging displays, but I was wondering if there are any known workarounds for this?

[waydabber]

You can "merge" the two displays by changing the identification method - take a look at the "Display Information…" section and observe what identifiers are changing when switching to PBP mode - probably the model or serial number and (as a consequence) the UUID. If you change the identification method of the display to a setting that does not involve the changing identifier, BetterDisplay will treat the two variants as the same display (note: you might need to make the app "Forget" the thus unneeded additional display first; also note that macOS uses the UUID so it will still treat the two modes as two separate displays). You can find all relevant options under the Additional settings… area under the display's General Settings section.

Note: you might want to export all your app settings first if you are concerned that any change you make might destroy your carefully configured stuff - https://github.com/waydabber/BetterDisplay/wiki/Export-and-import-app-settings.

[peterjcole]

Awesome, it worked! The model code was different for whatever reason, so setting the identification method to Manufacturer + Serial and forgetting the other display solved the issue. Thanks!