How to Use a Chromebook as a Monitor?

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Posted on July 13, 2020
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Chromebooks have been designed to use for internet browsing and as a resource-efficient productivity tool. Hence, some users may wonder how to use a Chromebook as a monitor.

Connecting a Chromebook to a desktop PC or laptop to use it as a monitor or as a secondary monitor is not a native feature built into Chrome OS but…like always, there is a way to do it.

How to Turn a Chromebook into a Monitor?

Since Chromebooks were not designed to use as an external display, this feature needs to be added, by installing 3rd party apps from the play store. One such as is Duet Display.

The app was ported to Android from iOS and allows Chromebooks to be used as a secondary display for any Windows or Mac OS computers.

The very first thing you need to do is to go the Duet Display website and download the PC or Mac version on the computer you wish to connect to the Chromebook and use it as a display.

Install the application and create an account.

Follow these Steps to use chromebook as second monitor for windows or mac:

Fill out your profile and click on the checkbox next to “Screen Sharing Enabled” to enable the feature.
Click on the Android icon and select your connection type. If your computer is connected to a wireless network select wireless, otherwise hit the wired button.
Open your Chromebook and install the Duet Display app from the Google Play store. You will have to purchase it.
Open the app and log in using your credentials created previously.
Go to your PC and open the application. It should discover the Chromebook. You should be able to see the display of the Chromebook in the PC application. Adjust the display settings for the Chromebook from the application.
Drag any application you want from your PC to the Duet Display and it should be able to project it onto the Chromebook display.

Things Worth Knowing

This is a quiet straight forward way to make a Chromebook work as a secondary display. The way it works with the Duet Display app is quite simple and it just shows an application on the Chromebook display.

As this entire setup is done over a Wi-Fi or wired connection there is a bit of latency. There is some lag input thus it would not work well for something like watching videos or movies on some basic Chromebooks.

The developers of the app continue to improve it and managed to reduce input lag but it is still noticeable.

This entire solution is meant to help use the Chromebook display as an additional monitor for individual applications. Looking for other methods on using a Chromebook as a monitor may not prove to be so fruitful as besides the Duet Display app, there are not that many options.

Another aspect worth noting is that while the Chromebook displays applications projected from a PC, it can still be used as a regular Chromebook.

The Duet Display app can be minimized if needed. The benefit of using the application is to have applications shown on a secondary monitor and use just one keyboard and mouse.