Turn a Laptop Into a Second Monitor on Windows (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: You could turn your laptop into a second monitor in Windows and you don't even need to install anything. Hi everyone, Kevin here. In this video, I will show you the built-in way to do it and then I will show you a method that works on almost any setup. Let's dive in. Here I have two laptops and I want to use this one as a second extended screen for my first laptop. To do that, let's open up Windows settings. A really quick way to do that is to simply press the Windows key together with I on your keyboard and that'll open up settings. Over on the left-hand side in the navigation, let's click on system and then we have all these different system settings. Scroll down until you see the option that says projecting to this PC and then click on that. If you see a message about optional features, we'll need to enable this first. So let's click on that and right here at the top, let's click on the button that says view features and here we get a user account control. Let's click on yes and at the very top, let's click on see available features. This will load a fairly long list. Scroll all the way down to the bottom until you see an option for wireless display. Check this box and then let's add this one item. It will take a few moments to install, but just run through this. Once it's done, let's close out of this view. Then let's navigate back. Then right at the top, let's launch the wireless display app to project to this PC. Now we're all ready to use this laptop as a second monitor. Now on your main computer, press the Windows key together with K and over on the right hand side, you should see the laptop that we just configured. I'll click on that and now it's establishing a connection between the two computers. And look at that, both laptops are now showing the exact same thing. By default, you'll see that it duplicates your screen, but if you would rather extend your display, simply press Windows K and over here on the right hand side, you could change it from duplicate to extend. Let's try that. Now check this out. Your screen now extends onto the second display. Over here, I'll open up a browser window. Here it's on my main display and I can drag it over onto my second display. It's pretty cool. Here, I'll bring it back over. Now you might be wondering, how do you position your monitors? Maybe you have your monitor on the right or on the left. How do you get it so your mouse naturally moves from one screen over to the other? Let's press Windows K again. That opens up all the different cast settings and down here at the bottom, we have more cast settings. Let's click on that. Within display settings here, I could adjust the position of each monitor. So let's say my secondary monitor is over on the left hand side. Here I could drag it over to the left. You could place it below, above or here. I'll place it back over on the right hand side. You have a few additional settings as well. So right down below, you could decide whether this secondary display should be your main display, in which case the task bar will show up on that display. But right now I have my primary laptop as the main display. Let's close out of display settings. To disconnect your display, simply press Windows K again. And right down here, you'll see the option to disconnect. I'll click on that. Now, this works great when everything is supported, but if you notice lag or maybe it doesn't work on your device, here's a second method that you can try. Head to the website, spacedesk.net. You'll find the link at the bottom of the screen and in the comments down below. On your main PC, install the Spacedesk driver. Here, I'll select the Windows 11 slash 10 driver. And over here, I'll choose Windows 11 64-bit, but choose the one that works with your PC. Once it finishes downloading, run through the install process. Then on your other laptop, install the viewer app. Right here, they have a Windows viewer app. One thing that's really neat is you could also install this on other devices like tablets. Here you have Android, iOS, Amazon, and even HTML5. I happen to be running a Windows laptop, so here I'll select this option. And right over here, I'll select the Windows 11 viewer app. Then run through the install process. Once you're all done installing, make sure to launch the app on both devices. Over here, I'll search for Spacedesk and I see the driver console on my main machine. I'll select that and it'll launch. Then on my secondary computer that I want to extend my display to, here it detected my other computer and now I'll connect to it. And over here on my secondary computer, I can now launch into full screen mode. And here, it's now extending my desktop. If you want to change it from extend to duplicate, simply right click on your desktop and then go down to display settings. And within display settings here, you could choose whether you want to duplicate or extend your desktop across the different displays. And there you go. Now you have a second monitor that works with just about any setup. Oh, and one cool thing about Spacedesk, if you use a wired ethernet connection, it'll be even smoother. If you found this video helpful, please consider subscribing and I'll see you in the next video.