Let's start with a little back story. I have a 2013 iMac (running with Catalina update) and it works perfectly fine. I have my (2020 running on Monterrey update) Mac Air which I have been doing all my coding stuff in since I hadn't use it much before and I had nothing saved on it. That tiny screen tho... goodness trying to have multiple screens at once is a nightmare. So I thought, why not turn my iMac into a display. Easy peasy since they are both apple products right?
WROOONNGGGG!!
I thought that all I need to do was use airplay. WRONG AGAIN. So then I started to search for a way to connect them both. According to apple support all I had to do was buy a thunderbolt cable and adapter in order to connect both devices. PSH there I go to buy them on amazon for a whooping $98 for both damn cables. I HOWEVER completely skipped the part where it said that the iMac had to run High Sierra or older version and the Mac had to be 2019 or older. WHAT..... excuse me.... WHY!? This is what they do in order to get people to buy more unnecessary things.
I went to my source of everything; Youtube! There I kept seeing in the comments that people were having the same issue as me! Most of the videos had the exact settings that apple suggested and the cables worked like a charm. I even considered downgrading my iMac again to the lowest update to get this to work for me. I continued to look through youtube (at this point I asked my sister to help me research and she went to Reddit ahahaha). After a few (like 15 videos) of the same thing, I finally found the lost treasure!
[youtube.com/watch?v=RXKaNkAYnz4]
This video is GOLD. He goes through the same issue I was having and gave the easiest most simple solution! It only cost me $8!!!!!!! It is a 4k HDMI Dummy plug, which will create a screen share! Which I connect to it with my iMac and THAT'S IT! ( I do have an adaptor that takes in an HDMI for my macbook air) I am about to go return those expensive cables that did nothing but question my ability and knowledge ahahahaha.
This is all it takes!
OMG I am about to comment on all those youtube videos and help some people out! This is my set up now and I am so happy!
