Desk setup February 2025

Checking back, it’s almost exactly a year since I last posted my desk setup, and it has actually changed quite a lot in the last year. The computer has changed, the monitor has changed, the keyboard has changed – pretty much everything except the desk itself, and the desk mat, have changed.

The current overall objective here is to keep the desk as clean as possible, whilst still being usable, and I think I’m getting pretty close to that ideal now.

At some point in the last year I retired the 27 inch iMac and replaced it with a M2 Pro Mac Mini, which is mounted below the desk.

The new monitor is an Apple Studio Display. Stupidly expensive, but it looks nice. These got a lot of grief for the quality of the in-built web cam, but either Apple has improved it or I’m not very fussy; in either case it works fine.

The Apple Studio Display only supports connecting via the one Thunderbolt port. Luckily, it works fine with my work-issued Lenovo laptop, via the laptop’s Thunderbolt port. The Studio Display is sitting on a wooden stand, made by a local recycled timber place.

On top of the Studio Display is a BenQ ScreenBar. This is their least fancy model, without the control puck, because I didn’t want anything else sitting on the desk. I really like the ScreeBar – it’s significantly nicer than having a lamp sitting on the table. Because it has a little lip that holds it on the top of the monitor I have a little bit of rubber underneath it to prop it up a bit so it doesn’t block the Studio Display webcam.

The keyboard is a Unicorne, which I’ve discussed previously. The keyboard is wired into the Studio Display. And a white Apple Magic Trackpad sits next to it.

One challenge with my work-from-home setup here is that Thunderbolt KVM (keyboard-video-mouse) switches are almost unheard of (and those that are heard of are apparently awful). My solution is decidedly old-school – when I’m using my work laptop I unplug the Studio Display from the Mac Mini and plug it into the laptop. I have a couple of Thunderbolt extension cords to make this a bit easier (and I have a separate mouse for the work laptop), but it’s all very manual.

One of the other features here are the MagSafe mount, which is this one. I mostly like it because it’s pretty inconspicuous. I’m on the phone a decent amount for work, so I just put it in speaker mode when no one else is home and leave it on the MagSafe mount and make my calls from there.

On the right hand side is a peg board with some cups for pens and a bunch of my keyboards. I’m not entirely happy with this setup yet because I don’t have enough of any one type of brackets to mount all of the keyboards. It’s surprisingly hard to buy just the right peg board brackets. But it’s nice not to have my keyboard all sitting in a cupboard. The pegboard is this one, from Bunnings.

Not visible in the photo is two Elgato Key Light Minis. About the only thing that really help a webcam is having lots of light, so I have these for when I’m doing Teams video conferences. One plus is that they work well with HomeBridge, so I don’t have to use the Elgato app to control them.

I’m sure I’m not quite done with this setup yet. I’ve got another wireless Corne keyboard on the way with the thinking that I can reduce the number of cables on the desk¹. But otherwise I’m pretty content.