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Show Additional Monitor Resolutions in Mavericks System 10.9
Mavericks offers a lot less resolution options in the "Scaled" list than 10.8 or earlier did. This can be a particularly severe problem if the resolutions that it thinks your projector supports are not, in fact, supported by it at all, as was the case with my setup.The fix for showing the extended list of possible resolutions in Mavericks is undocumented, so far as I can find, but incredibly easy:

In the Displays preference pane, hold down the option key and click the "Scaled" radio button. This will toggle on and off additional resolutions for the device (including more scaled resolutions for the built-in display in MacBooks).

I'm not aware of any radio button ever having worked that way before, so it's easy to miss.

If your external display isn't showing an image at all because the OS got its "native" resolution wrong, you will of course have to click the "Gather Windows" button at the bottom of the preference pane to bring the window for the blanked-out display over to the working one, where you can then option-click it and select a good resolution.
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Show Additional Monitor Resolutions in Mavericks
Authored by: doneitner on Nov 04, '13 04:18:36PM

This is not working for me running Mavericks in a Parallels virtual machine -- the display is stuck on 1024x768 (my native host screen resolution is 1600x900) and I can't find a way to change the guest (Mavericks) screen resolution to anything else. Admittedly this may be a Parallels issue and not a Mavericks issue, but man I wish Apple would stop removing reasonable features such as selecting a different screen resolution. We don't all have 20/20 vision to run our displays at the highest possible resolution.



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Show Additional Monitor Resolutions in Mavericks
Authored by: poenn on Nov 04, '13 11:36:49PM

This sounds more like a Parallels VM Tools problem. OS X is only showing what the hardware suggests to be capable of. If the virtual GPU isn’t 'capable' of a higher resolution you’re stuck. I’d ask in the parallels support forums.



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Show Additional Monitor Resolutions in Mavericks
Authored by: Unsoluble on Nov 05, '13 07:29:15AM

If it works at all like it does when you're running Windows in a Parallels VM, and you're running it windowed, you should be able to resize the VM window and the machine inside will change its resolution to match. Might even stick after that if you switch to fullscreen, but not sure.



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Show Additional Monitor Resolutions in Mavericks
Authored by: Crazor on Nov 07, '13 07:49:46AM

Another example of Apple not following their own Human Interface Guidelines.
IIRC, the HIG states that if a control (menu Item, button etc.) changes it's behaviour while option is being held, the text of the control has to change when only the option key is being held. This makes "hidden" options somewhat discoverable for people who know about the "option-click" concept.
If you open the "Apple" menu, you can see a nice example of how the control texts change (also note the subtle hints about different behaviour with the disappearing ellipses).



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Show Additional Monitor Resolutions in Mavericks
Authored by: Makosuke on Nov 08, '13 10:07:06AM

Normally I'm pretty forgiving about a lot of Apple's design decisions, but this one, they really blew it on the HIG, and standard design in general--in addition to (as you point out) it not changing the text at all when you hold down option to indicate that will do anything, the way menus do, has ANY radio button on the MacOS, ever, worked that way before?

I've certainly never seen one.

(Despite having used the MacOS since System 6 and being very used to hidden things, I nearly bought SwitchResX, not realizing that this could be done until I ran across a post in a forum somewhere.)



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Show Additional Monitor Resolutions in Mavericks
Authored by: stabbim on Dec 27, '13 12:50:41PM

Thanks for posting this, it was exactly what I needed. There's really no hint at all in the UI that this is possible. I am, admittedly, not a Mac expert, but I can't say I've ever seen a radio button with this behavior before either. In OS X, or any other OS.

Other than this one issue (which is no longer an issue), I'm wishing I had updated from Snow Leopard sooner. Mavericks actually seems faster so far.



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Show Additional Monitor Resolutions in Mavericks
Authored by: V.K. on Mar 14, '14 09:24:29AM

Great hint! Even though I'm used to Apple hiding extra menu options behind the "option" modifier this one is particularly bad as there is no text accompanying this button to suggest that pressing "option" does anything. I really hate when Apple does this kind of stuff. It's terrible UI design.



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