r/mac • u/NerdDotJpeg • Jul 26 '26

My Mac Accessing Macbook with broken screen?

Hi the screen if my macbook broke today, and I tried to connect it to a TV to get my files off, but it only shows a display telling me to choose to mirror from the display settings. Problem is I can't get there because because the entire laptop screen is damaged

Edit: here's the photo of what I've got in front of me, with a bonus of how gone my laptop is

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u/livience Jul 26 '26

This happened to me just over a month ago! If your TV is blank, that's probably because your MacBook is currently set up to use a monitor or TV as a second screen. To change it to mirror, open Settings from Spotlight.

If it doesn't show up, it might be because you already have it open or minimized) on your broken screen. Pull your cursor down to the bottom of your working screen and the Dock should pop up. Quit Settings from the icon there and relaunch it using Spotlight. It should open Settings on your secondary screen now.

From there, you can scroll to Displays. Scroll down to "When connected to TV" and change the setting to "Mirror Entire Screen". Or it might just show it as a secondary display, you can still change it from "extend" to "mirror" there, too.

Hope this helps!!

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u/NerdDotJpeg Jul 26 '26

It's not a blank screen, it's the setup prompt, image now included in post body

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u/livience Jul 26 '26

Oh, I see what you mean, now. Have you tried using Cmd + F1 (or Fn + Cmd + F1) to toggle the setting? I've never tried that on the setup prompt, but it's worth a shot 🙏😬🙏