Matlab will only use upper left corner when laptop is disconnect from large display how do I reset plotting to use the entire figure

Matlab 2015b. When I disconnect my laptop (Mac book pro ) from my large monitor, and use the laptop the plotting is hosed. What happens is the plot only occupies the user left had corner of the figure window.

The only way I have found to fix this is to bring Matlab down and restart it. Is there a method other than restarting Matlab to fix the plotting so that it uses the entire figure window when I disconnect the laptop from the large monitor.

Answer 1

[Image Analyst]

See what happens if you minimize it and then maximize it.

Answer 2

[Kelly Kearney]

Unfortunately, no. Matlab only checks for screen size, monitor position, resolution, etc once when it first starts, and all its subsequent plotting assumes this to stay constant. So if you add or remove a display, you need to restart Matlab to get the appropriate behavior.

I've reported this, and related dual-monitor problems, to the Mathworks before. Their response has always been that Matlab does not officially support multiple monitors, so we're out of luck. That's always been mildly annoying, though it's become more so with the new handle graphics for the reason you mention.

[Truman]

Thanks Kelly. I feared this was the case. You are absolutely correct this is annoying. You would think for the cost of Matlab products they would be able to support multiple monitors. Sigh.

[Emily]

Hopefully this can be upgraded in the 2018 versions. It's a problem not only when disconnecting from a secondary monitor, but also when using the secondary monitor initially. Even when figure sizes are specified in absolute units of points (instead of units relative to the screen size), everything displays at different scales and proportions on an external monitor versus on the laptop screen (and results in variations in the saved figure).

[Dahai Xue]

I am using 2018b, and I don't think anything has been done for this. I started my laptop with connected external monitor with the builtin monitor closed/off, and start MatLab on that external monitor. Using get(groot, 'ScreenSize'), I only get the monitor size of the builtin monitor, and my GUI behaves just like that. It has been confusing when I started my GUI on a Desktop with similar monitors, when the figure looks much smaller.

[Kristin Fitzmorris]

I'm using 2019b and still running into this issue. Would be great to at least understand how MATLAB determines the numer of monitors when staring up, so I could write my own function to reset the number of monitors if I disconnect my laptop.