If you are the kind of person who has a 27-inch iMac at home/office and a MacBook Pro for portable use, you may sometimes want to use your 27-inch iMac as a display to benefit from the size of the screen. Some people will buy an external display ($300) or a Thunderbolt Display ($1000), but if you have a 27-inch iMac and a MacBook Pro, there’s a cheaper way to do it.

Both the iMac and the MacBook Pro are equipped with a MiniDisplayPort or Thunderbolt port for the newer generations. To be able to use your iMac as an external display you will need a MiniDisplay Port to MiniDisplay Port cable or ThunderBolt cable. You can find them at Monoprice.com, it costs about $5 for a 6ft cable and the quality is great.

Once you receive your cable, turn on your iMac, plug one end of the cable into your MacBook Pro and the other to your iMac. Your MacBook Pro should now auto-detect the iMac as an external display and you’ll be ready to work on a bigger screen! If your laptop doesn’t detect your iMac, go to Apple Menu –> System Preferences… –> Displays –> Click on Detect Displays.

This trick should work on all 2009, 2010 and 2011 27-inch iMac’s and MacBook Pro’s.

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