Three monitors here. Primary and secondary pretty much exactly like you. Tertiary is a cheap portable one, 15", 1080p, that I’ve mounted above the secondary slightly angled downward and on which I have my communication apps pinned, as well as a full screen btop.

Web developer, couldn’t go without three monitors. Just three 1080p panels. Center monitor has the code editor, right has the browser, and left has the ticket or designs or the music player or Slack.

I have been using 2-3 monitors for more than 20 years now it’s the best.

I use 3 monitors at work, the left one is for outlook and teams, the middle one is the main development monitor, the right one is for browsers chrome/edge for work related sites, FF for surfing.

Three screens billed as “business expense” actually used as a sim racing rig.

But you will end up filling any screen space you have. When coding I very quickly fill out the space, to see files and folders I am intereacting with, communication apps, websites, IDE, ticket screen. Some days I wish I had 4.

Software engineer. I use three monitors. I primarily use macOS, if anyone’s curious.

Main monitor is a 42" 4K LG C3 OLED, two side monitors are 34" 4K LG IPS displays in vertical orientation.

For work, I keep my IDE and browser on my main monitor and I use it for most other applications that I might use, but usually just my IDE and browser.

Left monitor is used primarily to display my Jira board and tickets, which takes up the bottom 2/3 of the screen. I use Firefox’s video pop out feature to place YouTube or other videos in the top 1/3 so I can watch them while I work, if I want.

Right monitor is used primarily for Slack and Spotify. Slack takes up the bottom half. Spotify takes up the top half, and I often listen when I’m not watching videos.

Could I do all of this with spaces? Of course. Absolutely. I’ve had a one monitor setup, two monitor setup, and now a three monitor setup. Honestly, I really just like that I don’t have to switch spaces all the time. I can reference my Jira tickets while I work and chat with people all at the same time without having to switch spaces around any time I want to see certain details about something in a ticket or something someone said.

I also play games (separate PC) and stream, so the three monitors is useful for that, as well. I have the game up on my main monitor, and I use the side monitors to show my Twitch chat/bot, OBS, Discord, etc.

One monitor for ide. One monitor for docs.

Third screen, laptop, for slack/zoom

I work in IT. I have three, 2 standard orientation and a third vertical.

I use one for email and tickets, one for general browsing and remote administration, and the vertical one split horizontally with Teams on top and my terminal client/file browser on the bottom.

I used to swear by two monitors, but switched to a single ultrawide and it’s so much nicer. No bevels in the middle and therefore freedom to set up windows in whatever configuration you like. Good tiling window manager is a must though.

I have 5 if you count the one on my server.

One 1440p, 3 1080s- one in a vertical orientation for reading through lengthy config files. An additional 1080p that is used for specific servers, so I’m not sure if that counts since it’s technically a different machine ?

Use case varies drastically but, left to right:

Monitor 1 on the left is typically used for for videos throughout my work day, usually some Indian guy explaining a very technical concept in fractured English in a notepad document- that’s how you know you’re in deeeeep

Monitor 2 is the 1440 and it’s the main event so to speak. Whatever I’m working on the most at that moment goes onto that monitor.

Monitor 3 is the vertical monitor and used mostly for comms separated into 2-3 sections. Video calls on top, work chat underneath that. Config files opened in notepad++ when not actively using the comms.

Monitor 4 is technically on a different machine as well but it stays on my desk and looks like a normal part of the setup. I use mouse without borders to use my keyboard across both systems.

Monitor 5 is attached to an Dell Poweredge that I use as a proxmox host, which itself is used to host a pi-hole, home assistant, graylog, an truenas instance running plex. The truenas thing will probably go away and I’ll run the plex server directly on a machine with more graphical capability. On its other input is an old datto that doesn’t really do much yet.

Note: not a software dev, but a network engineer

Software engineer. I have a laptop to which I attach a curved widescreen monitor and a split mechanical keyboard with rainbow LEDs. The keyboard travels with me, and I have similar monitors at home and at work

3 screens are ideal for me:

• Primary

• Secondary screen to be able to look at 2 windows (that are maximized) side by side with the primary screen

• 3rd screen for static apps that are always open like email, slack, music, etc.

Having said that, getting a widescreen monitor has helped reduce my desk space requirements a lot. So now I only have 1 widescreen, and my laptop acting as the 3rd screen.

2 monitors plus laptop. One is mainly used for IDE and git, other one for anything else that’s relevant: browser, Jira, notes, second editor to reference stuff. Laptop screen is to the side and mainly used for chats.

Wouldn’t mind a third big screen, often notes, DB, RDC or brower have to be juggled around.

Three monitors for work and sometimes wish for a 4th. I’m doing research and pulling info from various documents into one document with commentary. A 4th would be nice so I could have email and chat on it. I’ve missed people asking me questions because I had documents in front of the chat and missed the pop-up. Sometimes you need 5 programes and then multiple documents open to understand what going on to explain it and then have to copy and paste from various documents.

For personal I liked it when I had 4 monitors. Main for web browsing and one for chats. The other two, one for playing video or music and the other to drag stuff to. The other two really shined when I would do photo editing or writing. Spreading things out over 3 monitors made things easier. Right now with my living situation I’m pretty much on a laptop so one monitor. Really makes photo editing not as fun and writing when I need to keep pulling up references stuff outright frustrating at times. I actually have more than 4 monitors at home since I kept picking them up at thrift stores, (DVI into USB adapters are nice) but didn’t find any real benefit to more than 4. But once everything settles I plan on getting my 4 monitors setup back and a Linux station for certain projects with 2 monitors and Raspberry Pi with 1 monitor.

I have two. Early career I found the second one absolutely improved my productivity - perhaps by 50% or more - as it helped me multitask really effectively.

Now, later in my career I have had kids for a while. My multitasking went out the window when I had kids - I find it hard to juggle more than one or maybe two things I’m working on at a time. I suspect this was due to poor sleep - parents never seem to really catch up to sleeping full nights like before kids. Instead of multitasking on lots of small things I transitioned to more in-depth work where I can focus for longer periods on a single thing.

Now, I think having a second monitor is still useful but I can function fine without it. It’s maybe a 10% boost if that.

For work, I have 2 monitors, and my docked laptop. The main two monitors are hugely beneficial for software development, as I can reference design docs or requirements while writing code, or I can have the debugger running on one screen, while the app runs on the other.

The laptop screen is where Teams and Outlook sit, so I can glance over at messages from the team, and maybe respond, without having to swap around any of my workspace.