Renaming one display renames multiple when the displays have the same vendor and model IDs

[dsemaya]

I have a Mac Studio with 3 LG UltraFine 5K displays. I purchased BetterDisplay Pro thinking it would allow me to rename the displays so that I didn't have to see them shown as "LG UltraFine (1)", "LG UltraFine (2)", and "LG UltraFine (3)" (often out of order). I am trying to name them Left, Center, and Right. Naming the left one works fine, but for the other two, if I name one of them Center or Left the name also applies to the other one. Right now my monitors are named Left, Right 1, and Right 2 which is not what I want.

I think the reason why the left one is working properly is that I believe that one is the original Thunderbolt-only revision from 2016 (as per the week of manufacture in the exported report that BetterDisplay provides while the other 2 are the newer revision post-2019 that supports both DisplayPort and Thunderbolt (they were built in 2021 and 2024).

Is there a way for BetterDisplay to not get confused by these 2 displays so I can name them properly?

Thanks!

[waydabber]

Hi there - the display rename feature changes system configuration files (called display overrides) to modify the display's name. But these overrides are applied based on vendor/model numbers. So if two displays have the exact same vendor and model ID, they will share the configuration override.

What you can do (if you are on Apple Silicon) is that you create a custom EDID for one of the displays that uses a different display name and apply the custom EDID on the fly. That should rename the display system-wide. Inside the app you can assign different names to the displays (under the additional settings section of the display) but that will only have an effect inside the app.

To override the EDID, you need to export the EDID (see the tool for this under the display's settings tab), download the free AW EDID Editor and change the display name and then use the apply EDID feature. You can set the EDID to auto-apply. Note that the new EDID will only be applied when the app is running.