How to Play StarCraft 2 on Dual Monitors: Tips and Tricks

1. Introduction
2. How to Let the Mouse Go Out of the StarCraft 2 Window and Prohibit StarCraft 2 Minimizing When Clicking Outside Its Window
3. How to Launch StarCraft 2 on External Monitor, Panel or TV
4. Conclusion

1. Introduction

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is a terrific game. It's almost perfect except for a single flaw: it does not support multiple displays because Blizzard decided that "multi-monitor support for StarCraft II may be too great of a tactical advantage over other players without more than one monitor". Thus, the game occupies only a single screen on dual-monitor stations, whereas the second monitor stays free and may be used for a parallel web-surfing, chatting or even working.

If you have dual, triple or more monitors and want a better control on StarCraft 2 - we are ready to help you: new features added in the version 2.3 of Actual Multiple Monitors are intended to make playing StarCraft 2 more comfortable in a multiple displays environment.
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2. How to Let the Mouse Go Out of the StarCraft 2 Window and Prohibit StarCraft 2 Minimizing When Clicking Outside Its Window

The "Fullscreen" display mode provides the fastest video output and the smoothest game experience. However, in a multi-monitor environment some issues arise:

• while active, StarCraft 2 locks the mouse within its host screen, so that you are unable to operate windows on other screens
• if you click Alt-Tab trying to switch to another window - the game will minimize automatically, thus blocking the ability to observe its state in background
• the minimization/restoration of the fullscreen StarCraft 2 is time-consuming, as the game is resource-intensive and it should release the used resources when it becomes inactive and renew them upon re-activation

Playing StarCraft 2 fullscreen on dual monitors

To resolve all these issues, you just need to do the following:

• launch Actual Multiple Monitors
• launch StarCraft 2
• press the Ignore deactivation hotkey (Ctrl-Alt-Shift-I by default)

After that, you will be able to easily drag the mouse out of the StarCraft 2 window and work with windows on other monitors. This also prevents the StarCraft 2 minimization when you activate another window.

To restore the usual functioning of the fullscreen StarCraft 2, press the Ignore deactivation hotkey again when StarCraft 2 is active.
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3. How to Launch StarCraft 2 on External Monitor, Panel or TV

Another issue of the fullscreen mode is that StarCraft 2 runs it on a primary monitor only. Thus, if you run it on a notebook with a large external screen attached - there is no general way to force StarCraft 2 run on that screen. One solution is to switch the primary monitor from notebook's internal display to external screen. You can make it easily via Actual Multiple Monitors system tray context menu:

How to launch StarCraft 2 on external monitor, panel or TV:
Switch the primary display via Actual Multiple Monitors context menu

However, on some laptops you cannot make primary any monitor other than the internal screen. In such case, you should switch the StarCraft 2 display mode from "Fullscreen" to "Windowed (Fullscreen)".

StarCraft 2 Options: Switching display mode from "Fullscreen" to "Windowed (Fullscreen)"

Then, you can move this window to the external display using the Move to Next Monitor hotkey (Win-/ by default). If your external screen has the different resolution - the StarCraft 2 fullscreen window will be adjusted automatically to fit this resolution.
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4. Conclusion

Hope the advices above will make your dual- or multi-monitor StarCraft 2 experience more convenient and exciting. You may question about any other subjects related to running StarCraft 2 along with Actual Multiple Monitors in the Technical Support forum section or post your ideas in the Tips and Tricks forum section.
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