I recently got a Dell laptop, monitor, and DisplayLink Universal Dock . I really don’t use my Dell laptop often(sorry Dell!), so I set up my 2019 MacBook Pro instead. I had already plugged in everything between the monitor, desktop, and mouse to the dock, connected it to my Dell laptop ( by means of just plugging in the USB-C !) and everything worked cohesively right away. A few extra steps are needed to connect to your MacBook, however…
Steps to connect your Mac:
- Download the correct DisplayLink driver for your OS version .
- Click on the installation package (likely in ‘Downloads’) and follow the installation instructions. Then find it (‘DisplayLink Manager’) in Apps and open it.
- An error message saying ‘System Extension Blocked’ might show up. For that go to your System Preferences>Security & Privacy>General tab and click Accept on the bottom. Detailed instructions here.
If You Still Can’t Connect to the Monitor
If only the external keyboard and mouse were synced to your Mac (not the monitor), restart, and open DisplayLink. It may be that it needs to acquire screen recording permissions for the monitor to sync with your Mac. For this, go to System Preferences>Security & Privacy>Privacy tab. Scroll down to ‘Screen Recording’ and click to select ‘DisplayLink Manager’ .
Sometimes my monitor randomly decides to not acknowledge the connection to my Mac. What I found works is to go to my apps and click on DisplayLink. It always starts back up when I do!
Note: When I was throwing away the boxes I did see instructions that could possibly be helpful but if you’re like me you do trial and error and/or Google instead. 😅
