School work:
Left = Jabref
Center = texmaker
Right = PubMed, Elsevier, sci hub, etc

Gaming:
Left = discord
Center = game
Right = game guide, YouTube, media

Work (I hate literally all of these programs):
Left: slack
Center: Asana, onenote
Right: gdocs

I started using two so I could more easily remote game with my sibling.

The second one would have their screen stream up, so it was like we were playing split screen co-op back in the day. :)

Used to have two. Went back to one. Professionally I feel like 2 monitors is a must ( excl. Laptop ). Or a single big ass monitor.

We've got ( a single ) curved screens at work. It also works because it's wide enough.

Professionally I do believe it boosts productivity. Personally/at home not really ( for me ). It can be convenient if you play an MMO and want to look something up while still seeing the game.

I do have a spare monitor but I disconnected it as I was rarely using it.

I'm an engineer (a non-IT engineer) and have 4. There is so much ensuring consistency between drawings and documents. I'd like 5 (including the inbuilt one) but graphics card on my high performance company laptop says no.

At least one for file explorer, then other three could be pdf editor, or word, or excel, or internet browser.

I regularly have 4 drawings open, plus another reference, plus windows explorer for file management.

It's never enough. I could totally do with more than 4 screens, I'm already squeezing multiple drawings onto one monitor.

I do 'light' software development for a SAAS. I use a single ultra wide. It has PiP settings so I can display my personal if I'd like while working, or have everything displayed on the work side as a triple window or dual window setup. The flexibility is great but overall ultra wides are still niche and a general pain in the ass. Good luck getting any game to run more than 90fps when you're pushing a 5k resolution and 240 refresh.

Not a developer, but I will always use 2 monitors when I can - using the secondary for Outlook: inbox on one side, calendar on the other. I will also swivel this for showing presentations/plans/documents to members of my team in face to face meetings, and will move Zoom windows to in webinars etc it whilst I get on with some actual work on the main monitor.

I'm in IT/remote administration and have 3 monitors. The left is my main screen and where ticketing/remote windows live, middle screen is email/chats/research, and the right screen is a smaller, portrait oriented monitor for reading long documents (or trying to follow my own code) or I'll throw my security camera feed and YouTube on that one to have visible out of the corner of my eye.

Basically, for all situations, left is communication, center is the application I'm using (game, ide, etc.), right is information (documentation, other resources, guides, or whatever else). What each application is changes based on what I'm working on, but the function is the same essentially always.

If I am...

...gaming, I run the game on one monitor and something like a Wiki for said game on the other.

...doing music I have the DAW on the big screen and everything else on the other.

...working I have my focus point (CLI, IDE, SQL Dev, etc) on the small screen and all the noise (e-mail, chat, browsers, etc) on the big screen. Small screen is better for focus.

Not a software dev but tech is central to my life.

3 monitors for normal use

1 - personal streaming, video meetings

2 - remote business desktop access, main personal browsing window

3 - online chat presence window, personal email client, other

3 monitor gaming

3 monitors for racing simulators and any games that support it (which make sense)

Single monitor gaming

1 - Game related content on left 2 - Game window in center 3 - Game related social media or streaming

3 monitor home labbing

1 machine or app per monitor Triple monitor stare and compare windows GUI / CLI / Monitoring system interface

I didn't realize how extensively I used my monitors until this exercise. Feel better about the spend and space tax related to it.

I use two monitors: one in landscape orientation and the other vertical. I usually keep console windows in the vertical one and that's where I write code. Typically its code editing on the left side and a few console windows with compiler/server output on the right. Landscape gets firefox web UI: current app, time clock or notes window.

So that's two workspaces. I have additional monitor-level workspaces I can flip to: #3 for chrome (google products), #4 for signal/thunderbird, #5 for keepassxc, #6 for an additional set of console windows for a second project, or for other things like system upgrades and etc.

I run pretty much the same workspaces on my laptop with only one monitor, the main difference is having to flip back and forth more. Its a little more mental overhead. On the dual monitor rig I like the vertical orientation for my code window, I can see 2x the amount of code at once.

Overall I'd say the productivity boost from multiple monitors is low to mid. Its nice to have but I can still get work done on a laptop screen. That said I do most of my work on the dual setup.

spaces > monitors

portability > exactly what I want

I have 2 monitors. My primary is ultra wide for gaming and the secondary is discord, Spotify, etc. so I can view messages and stuff without leaving my full screen game.

For work? I just use my Mac monitor like a neanderthal. Idk why but I don't really find multiple monitors helps me work faster.

I’m a video editor with two 27” monitors. One landscape the other portrait. I used to use both monitors for premiere but found moving the mouse around that much annoying so I condensed all my panels into one monitor and use the portrait one for notes and communication. I feel like I could go back to a single monitor system in the future but I like having two

I have three monitors. Middle is an ultra wide with the tests and another window of stuff (the app, data, etc). Right is a 1080 with docs. Left is a 1080 with the code in question.

Teacher here. I have my laptop (16”) and an ultra wide (34”) on my desk, and a projector behind me. I keep my email, attendance, and calendar on the laptop screen.

On the ultra wide, I keep my grade books and various spreadsheets, since more width makes it easier to see more data, and I have my daily agendas/lesson plans. Again, more width makes it easier to see the whole week at once. I keep that fixed to 2/3rds width of the screen, and the other side is reserved for Spotify at like 1/6th width

The projector is used to show the daily agenda, videos, instructions, etc. I very frequently screencast my iPad to the projector, so I can fill out worksheets on it with the class and they can see me write or circle things.

I can’t even fathom having any less screen real estate now. I gotta be able to see it all at once!

Two 4k 32 inch monitors and docked laptop screen.
One monitor directly in front which holds code, research or video call.
One monitor to the right mounted vertically and angled towards me that holds a terminal, notes/email/jira or reference documentation for whatever I'm doing on the middle screen.
Laptop is to the left of the main screen and has slack open.

I'm big on tilling window managers, so I tend to do a lot of flipping between workspaces rather than apps, in my mental model. I've gotta use a Mac for work which sucks for tilling, but I can mostly make it work.

Three 27" monitors. Right one is portrait, has Slack and music player split screen, left is email or reference material, center one is for doing the actual work.

I work in a customer facing role but also do graphic design, write books, make music, and occasionally code things.

Massive productivity boost. When I work from my laptop I feel like a grandma.

Not an IC anymore but my workhorses for the better part of 13 years were 13” laptops. Nice and simple. I don’t get the multiple monitor thing honestly.

Not a software developer, I just do QA on written documents, and being able to have 3-4 windows side by side is really nice. I usually have 1-2 tracking spreadsheets open on the left, and two documents side by side on the right. I use a laptop at work as well, so sometimes I'll leave it's screen on for email and Teams chat so neither interrupts my work.

I do a lot of video editing. 3 monitors all the same size. Right is main edited output. Center is all my editing tools. Left is file management, chat, stock footage, etc.

Been doing it for years as a sysadmin. Great for documentation and multiple terminal windows. Interrupting programs (email, messengers) on the small screen so they are easy to review but out of direct line of sight.

Small screen makes it easy to screen share with others. They can seen the whole thing at a reasonable size.

Two monitors is the absolute minimum, but I think three can be very useful.

On one, I have reference materials, on one I have code, and on one I have the application I'm developing. I think it makes for a pretty good workflow.

I'm a 3 monitor person as well. 34" ultrawide as my main with two 24" widescreens side-to-side immediately above it. I use it for work and personal use.
Ultrawide has my main programs for work: internet browsers and job specific programs get about 60% of the real estate on the left, while pdf's, and other less essential programs go to the right 40% of the screen.
The top left monitor gets Teams, Excel docs, or auxiliary browsers.
Top right gets email and media (YouTube, Spotify, etc) or any overfill if I'm dealing with a particularly cluttered job.

For personal, ultrawide is obviously used for games, movies, etc, while top left has task manager, MSI Afterburner, and Throttlestop (I run a laptop). And the top right has Discord.

I have three identical monitors in a row. Primarily I use the center one, for productive work and gaming, but often I'll have something up on the second screen that I'm working with as well. It's more rare that I actively use the third one, but some tasks have more than two or three windows and now I can see all of them full size at once.

I've occasionally used them as a single ultra wide screen for gaming, but since then I've gotten an hmd for VR and that is better.

I have two monitors plus my laptop screen. I keep my IDE open on one, my browser open on another, and my terminal open on the last one. It may not boost my productivity a lot each day, but saving maybe a minute every hour adds up.

It’s much easier to move my mouse to the left than it is to switch windows. When I’m not at home and I have to code on just my laptop, I do miss the extra monitors.

Software dev here, and I'm pretty confident that 4 is the ideal number, as long as you have window snapping to split them in half:

Left (inputs): half current ticket, half whatever documentation you need

Main (work): IDE, half test code, half actual code

Right (outputs): half terminal, half web page (frontend) or postman (backend)

Bottom (comms): Smaller laptop screen dedicated to slack / email

What is a rainbow computer?

One monitor for moodboard, another for materials, tablet monitor for working.

I use multiple monitors for audio production. My use case is a bit weird since I code Csound and use a DAW, which is unconventional. It's great for having the DAW up on the 4k, and some code or docs or both on the 1080p, 144Hz. If you didn't guess from the mixture of resolutions and frame rates, I've got gaming covered as well.

Truthfully, the 4k probably has the real estate to do all that on its own, but it was the last monitor I bought and why not use the other? I'm too lazy to figure out a setup to hook up the other 1080s I have lying around. (And don't need the space in any case)

At my job I use 3 screens. Laptop screen is for Outlook and Teams, the middle screen is for the needed local main application and the right screen is for remote server connections. Having just 2 screens or even only 1 screen would lower my productivity.

At home I'm a single screen user, but its a 4K 28" screen and large enough to hold all my crap.