How to get back the missing monitor option in Mountain Lion's menubar?

When plugging in an external monitor on every OS X < 10.8 you could set the monitor options to show up on the menu bar.

How do I get this option on Mountain Lion?

I connect a DVI monitor via the hdmi ouput on a retina MacBook Pro and I am unable to find a way to enable this option.


System>Library>Coreservices>Menu Extras - Double click on the Displays.Menu icon

Just like in the old (10.3?) days.


Display Menu (free) on the Mac App store adds the menu options back for OS X 10.8


The menubar option is not available anymore.

You have to go into System Preferences > Displays.

THe fastest way is to use shortcuts:

Option(alt) + Brightness Key on an Apple Keyboard brings you directly to the display settings. Command + F1 to toggle between video mirroring and extended desktop Command + F2 to detect displays

Control + Brightness to change the brightness of the secondary display.


I did find out that in Display Preferences, if you hold down Option ⌥ you get the detect display. The the other solution of using + Brightness keys works.