10.14.6 Issues with Display Link Drivers
 

Well seems a number of people on 10.14.6 have discovered Display Link driver issues.

Firstly, on drivers 5.2 I can not use an external Thunderbolt Monitor. The drivers incorrectly work with the external dock and simply do not let thunderbolt monitors or HDMI screens off a thunderbolt dock function. Random start ups, maybe if you remove the connection to the dock you may get the monitors to start up...maybe.

Reverting back to driver 5.1.1 fixes the external Display issue and monitors from an external dock function as well as monitors that are connected to DisplayLink dock (swapping between them). However, what I have found on driver 5.1.1 is that if you use DisplayLink docks and then non-Display link docks that the process of swapping almost always sends the MacOS DisplayServer into high CPU usage. DisplayServer will sit at 30% usage and eventually increase to the point where the system kills it and restarts. This of course is after the Fans start and whirl for an hour or so....

Reverting back to driver 5.0 now to see if this is any better as obviously the last 2 have serious issues for myself. To be honest, given all the issues with DisplayLink drivers for Macs over the last release and an inability to get a stable working functional version I'd be happy if my work got rid of these things. Too much wasted time in trying to make things work.

I'll report back on how 5.0 driver does...cross the fingers that some thing will reliably function.

Tried 5.0 drivers last night on 10.14.6. Ran all day connected to a DisplayLink dock without any issues. Went home plugged in the thunderbolt monitors and WindowServer process went high straight away. Sent Mac to sleep. Returned to work plugged into a DisplayLink dock and DisplayLinkManager goes to about 150% CPU utilisation and WindowServer sits at about 35%. After 15 to 20 minutes of this the OS kills it and everything returns back to normal at 4-10% for these processes.

There is nothing unusual on the Mac its used for office work really just VMWare Fusion, Office and Citrix loaded.

The 5.0 drivers are definitely slower to start up the external displays on Display Link but certainly no issue with external thunderbolt monitors like 5.2 drivers. I guess this may be an issue with 10.14.6 and DisplayLink. Look forward to see what happens with Catalina but after waiting almost a year to get Display Link working with 10.14 I'm not going to upgrade any time soon.

Guess this is just another one of those Display link quirks that is expected to be put up with in the end.

I'll post support files in the next couple of days for this as it is repeatable every single time.

What computer are you using? In our troubleshooting, we have been able to get this working with a Dell D6000 using current DL drivers on all tested MBP models 2018-prior on 10.14.6, the 2019 MBP is a different story. Doing an SMC reset after installation while plugged in makes it work, but once unplugged/re-plugged it does not ever function again unless an SMC is completed again with dock plugged in.

2017 13 inch MAC 4 USB-C ports and is replicable on a completely fresh install of Mojave with nothing else present except for Displaylink. It does take several hours of continous use to occur but is repeatable every single day. I've tried PRAM rest, SMC reset and a completely fresh install of Mojave. No difference at all.