Hidden gem: Use your Surface Pro as external monitor

Although I am happy with my external 15,6″ ASUS USB-C display, it never fits the sleek backpacks nor shoulder totes that I carry with me. Secondly, the old flip-flop stand is never as handy as one would dream of – limiting the view angle and orientation.

Although it sounds like I hate my external monitor – it has saved me during presentations and workshops a ton of times. However, travelling with both a personal and my corporate device, I figured I am enough donkey as it is. With my new Surface Pro 12″ (Yes, the one with Qualcomm Snapdragon ARM CPU) I wanted to see how seamless experience I could transition from a wired secondary display to use my (or any) Surface as a wireless external display.

First, your primary device (desktop or laptop) has to support Miracast, and you need to ensure that you can enable the optional Windows feature “Wireless display”. Now there are several steps you may take to enable this in the GUI (search “optional features” in the Windows search bar to get started), or simply run this PowerShell script.

$value = Get-WindowsCapability -Online -Name *wirelessDisplay* | Select-Object -ExpandProperty State

if($value -eq "Installed") {
    Write-Host "Wireless Display is already installed" -ForegroundColor Green
} else {
    Get-WindowsCapability -Online -Name *wirelessDisplay* | Add-WindowsCapability -Online
    Write-Host "Installing Wireless Display" -ForegroundColor Green
}

Now the first element is simply to get the installed state, in case Wireless Display is installed prior to running the scipt. The if- block tests this and installs the feature if it is not installed. You will need local-admin rights to perform this task either in the GUI or in PowerShell – one more argument for telling my friend Sami that admin rights should be human rights (internal joke applied). Now if you are not local admin, wrapping the script and deploying this require some minor adjustments, but wrapping this as a intunewin may let users install this as an application from the company portal:

$value = Get-WindowsCapability -Online -Name *wirelessDisplay* | Select-Object -ExpandProperty State
$Path_local = "$Env:Programfiles\_MI"
Start-Transcript -Path "$Path_local\Log\install\WirelessDisplay-install.log" -Force -Append

if($value -eq "Installed") {
    Return 1707
} else {
    Get-WindowsCapability -Online -Name *wirelessDisplay* | Add-WindowsCapability -Online
    Return 0
}

Stop-Transcript

Wireless Display does support two-way input, so your “external” display might give input to your primary device as well!! The result? Well I’ll let you decide for yourself (video recorded in the break of a meeting, no photoshop or AI here guys!):

I know a lot of people are eager to get some feedback on the new Surface Pro 12″ and Surface Laptop 13″ – but hands down – why not give my fellow MVP Ian Dixon and Rob Quickenden some shout-out for their hands-on videos:

• Surface Laptop 13″
• Surface Pro 12″ and Laptop 13″ hands-on

In a few weeks, I’ll hope to be back with some more info on the latest updates from Windows Recall and what’s in for the future.

• Alex