Why Your New M1 MacBook Can't Use Your Monitor As An External Display

I bought a new M1 MacBook and was super excited to use it.  My monitor has a USB-C input.  The MacBook comes with a USB-C cable.  Awesome.  

Plug everything up.  Not so awesome.  

The monitor could not be used as an external display for the MacBook.  I called Apple Support, who were super nice but not helpful in the least.  They had me reboot the computer, connect and disconnect, etc but nothing worked.

Finally, I found an obscure thread on the Internet saying that it was the cable.  

The cable?  Could it be?  

Yes.  I bought this cable and it worked right away.  The USB-C cable that comes with this super-sophisticated MacBook doesn’t work for external displays.  

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