How do I connect a broken computer screen to a monitor in order to display what is on the broken screen?

Question

My computer has a broken, cracked screen meaning you cannot view anything on it. But the computer itself works fine. It is a macbook pro from 2011 and I can connect via a thunderbolt to hdmi connector. The thing is, in the preferences of the computer I failed to set it to display desktop. So when I connect the adapter to the replacement monitor it only displays a blank screen with background where things can be dragged. I cannot change the preferences of the computer to display desktop because the screen is broken and therefore I can't access the preferences to change this. My question is, can I somehow make the replacement monitor mirror the desktop of the computer with the cracked screen, even though I cannot view what is happening on the cracked screen. Or maybe are there any solutions using ethernet where i could connect my laptop to another computer and use screen sharing somehow to control my broken screen. Please if you have any ideas or answers, I would love to hear them. Thanks.

Answer 1

click command+space. Spotlight will appear in the upper right. Type "System Preferences" (without quotes). You'll then be able to bring up your preferences screen in order to make the external monitor your primary screen.

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When you hook up a laptop to an external monitor you have to press a few buttons in order to change the output from the internal monitor screen to an external monitor. To do this start u your laptop, and press and hold the function key which is the letters "fn" inside a box. Press and hold this with the corresponding F# key that has the monitor symbol, which may look like this " lOl " or some variation of that. This happened to my brother's old laptop, he broke the screen and I just hooked it up to an external monitor and it worked fine. It m ay not kick on right away with mine, what mine does is it starts up on the external screen then dispears when you log onto the computer, so what I do is I log on, I just type my password because once the log on screen kicks on it automatically puts the cursor in the password box, so I put in my password and I press the function key; "fn" and I press and hold it with F4 which is my external monitor key, then after a few seconds my external monitor kicks back on. Hope this helps!!

Answer 2

Broken Computer Screen

Answer 3

Hit COMMAND+SPACE. Spotlight will appear in the upper right. Type "System Preferences" (without quotes). You'll then be able to bring up your preferences screen in order to make the external monitor your primary screen.