
Video only : If you have extra ports, are working with a desktop computer, or are using a MacBook Air and don’t mind occupying one port with power and one with the display adapter, your best option is the USBCele USB Type C to Mini Display Port 4K Cable Adapter, which is much more affordable ($14.99 on.That’s useful with a laptop with one or two ports, like the 12-inch MacBook and all Thunderbolt 3 MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models. Pass-through USB-C power: A great adapter with USB-C power passthrough is the UPTab USB-C to Mini DisplayPort Adapter ($34.95).You have three solid choices for adapters: Only a single Mac model ever included a USB-C connector that didn’t include Thunderbolt 3: the 12-inch MacBook that Apple introduced in 2015, updated in subsequent years, and discontinued in 2019. (While we’ve written about this before across several articles, we decided to consolidate everything we knew, alongside newer and better-reviewed adapters, into a single place.) Docks extend compatibility further, with Mini DisplayPort, VGA, DVI, and other formats.

Apple’s version also allows for backwards compatibility with Thunderbolt 2 and, by using adapters, can directly connect to HDMI, DisplayPort, and USB 2 and 3, among other standards. All of Apple’s current Macs include Thunderbolt 4, a high-speed data-transfer standard that also relies on the USB-C connector. In this article, I discuss compatibility with Thunderbolt 3, which relies on the USB-C connector.

Use the Sidecar feature to extend your Mac with an iPad. (Also, don’t forget that if you have an iPad that can run iOS 13 and a Mac model released since about 2015 running macOS Catalina, you can
