Is there a way to quickly switch between two screens when displaying from my laptop?

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I've connected my laptop to my TV, using an HDMI cable. Now I want to be able to quickly move my mouse and keyboard focus from the laptop to the TV screen, and vice-versa using a keyboard sequence, if such exists. Does such a keyboard sequence exist?

Rod

Posted 2014-06-28T23:51:25.250

Reputation: 1 305

In windows 7 pressing the windows key + P brings up an alt-tab style display switcher. Dunno if this works for windows 8 but try it. Also some laptops have a hot key, in particular look for symbols that look like monitors on your F? keys. Some graphics drivers have support for assigning global key combos to display configurations as well, check your driver control panel. – Jason C – 2014-06-29T00:22:53.370

Do you mean it's hooked up, but you're only displaying on a single screen at any given time, and want to change which screen? – Collin Grady – 2014-06-29T04:10:47.597

Answers

So I assume you've got the following setup:

Watch the tutorial or training video on the TV (as you described).
Use Visual Studio on the primary/built-in screen.
Control playback without having to move your mouse or keyboard focus.

This is pretty easy to do given the correct hardware:

All you'll need is a multimedia keyboard having multimedia keys (play/pause, stop, back, forward).
Open your training video in a multimedia program such as Windows Media Player.
Maximize the media player's window on your TV screen.
Return to your desktop/primary screen.
Now you're able to use the multimedia keys on your keyboard to control the media player. While these are primarily meant for playing audio, they work when playing some video as well.

I've verified and this is working with a Logitech G110 keyboard (but pretty much any keyboard should be fine for this). I can write this text and at the same time pause/continue a video without changing keyboard focus.

Mario

Posted 2014-06-28T23:51:25.250

Reputation: 3 685

Most laptops have the ability to view both laptop and TV/projector (or other VGA, HDMI etc. device) to "mirror" each other (same image to TV as on laptop screen), to "extend" the displays (giving one long desktop across the two screens) or to have one or the other on at any one time (one will turn off and the other will be the "primary" screen - often used if you want your laptop screen off to watch a film on a big TV, for example).

Most laptops you have to hold Fn + one of the F keys - F5 is quite frequently used. You should get an overlay pop up to show what is going to be displayed. The F key to look for will have what looks like two monitors next to each other or "LCD/CRT".

A number of graphics card manufacturers have written system tray applications where you can fully manage the output to an external display in a couple of clicks. These are usually installed during the driver install process.

Kinnectus

Posted 2014-06-28T23:51:25.250

Reputation: 9 411

I am trying to extend the desktop. What I'm trying to do is put a training video up onto my TV, and get Visual Studio going on the laptop. That way I can watch the training, pause it, do some of what the guy's been demonstrating, then go back to the video, etc. I'll try one of these suggestions, thanks! – Rod – 2014-07-01T02:10:26.697

Sweet. Try finding the Fn + F(<1-12>) buttons on your laptop. You may also have a graphics card control panel that you can enable the right output at the click of a button. – Kinnectus – 2014-07-01T07:08:39.900

It's not possible to "just move focus" because it doesn't make sense. What should get focused? Where the mouse pointer should jump to?

The screens are either working in duplication mode, which means the focus is on both screens at once, or the desktop is stretched across both screens, which means that mouse pointer is where you've left it. From computer's point of view, it's more or less one big screen.

Agent_L

Posted 2014-06-28T23:51:25.250

Reputation: 1 493