Display Pilot 2 is BenQ's official macOS companion app for its monitors, giving you direct software control over display settings — brightness, colour modes, input switching, and more — without ever reaching for the OSD buttons on the panel itself.
What is Display Pilot 2?
Display Pilot 2 is a monitor management application made by BenQ, designed exclusively for macOS users who own a compatible BenQ or AQCOLOR display. It replaces the physical on-screen display menu with a clean, keyboard-and-cursor-driven interface that sits in your menu bar, letting you adjust everything from colour temperature to PIP/PBP layouts in seconds.
The app communicates with the monitor over USB-C or USB-B, so it actually sends commands down the wire rather than guessing at DDC/CI signals the way third-party tools like MonitorControl or BetterDisplay have to. That direct line means the controls are snappier and the feature set is richer — particularly for BenQ's pro-grade colour presets (sRGB, DCI-P3, Rec.709, and the like) which appear as named profiles rather than numbered modes.
What does Display Pilot 2 do best?
Display Pilot 2 excels at unlocking colour-science features that are invisible in macOS System Settings. On a BenQ PD or SW series monitor, you can switch between ICC-calibrated colour spaces in one click, toggle Low Blue Light modes, or activate Darkroom mode for print-editing work — all without moving your hands to the bezel.
- Colour mode switching: named sRGB, Adobe RGB, DCI-P3, and custom presets appear as a simple list; no hunting through OSD sub-menus.
- Input hot-switching: if you're running two machines into one monitor, swapping the active input takes a single menu-bar click instead of three button presses.
- KVM / PIP / PBP layouts: on supported monitors the app exposes multi-picture layouts and the built-in KVM switch, so you can control which machine is active on which half of the screen.
- Brightness scheduling: tie brightness levels to time-of-day rules, useful for matching ambient light without depending on macOS Night Shift.
Where it falls short is obvious: the app is entirely useless unless you own a compatible BenQ monitor. It's a hardware companion, not a universal display tool.
Is Display Pilot 2 free?
Yes — Display Pilot 2 is a free download from BenQ's website and is also installable via Homebrew Cask. There are no in-app purchases, no subscription tier, and no feature gating. If you own a supported BenQ monitor it costs you nothing beyond the hardware itself.
Who should use Display Pilot 2?
Display Pilot 2 is aimed squarely at creative professionals and power users who have invested in a BenQ display and want to get full value from it. Photographers, video editors, and motion-graphics artists working on a PD or SW series panel will find the one-click colour space switching alone worth the install — toggling between a calibrated Adobe RGB proof and a DCI-P3 grade without re-launching anything is genuinely faster than the OSD workflow.
Developers and dual-machine setups benefit from the input switching and KVM features. If you're running a Mac alongside a Windows machine through the same BenQ USB-C hub monitor, the ability to flip the KVM from the menu bar rather than hunting for a hardware button is a real quality-of-life improvement over doing it blind.
If you don't own a BenQ monitor, look elsewhere. BetterDisplay handles DDC/CI brightness and resolution scaling for any display, and MonitorControl is the go-to open-source option for external monitor brightness on non-BenQ hardware. Display Pilot 2 doesn't compete in that space — it's a deeper but narrower tool.
How does Display Pilot 2 compare to BetterDisplay?
BetterDisplay is the more versatile app: it works with virtually any external monitor, offers resolution overrides, HiDPI tricks, and XDR brightness unlocking. Display Pilot 2 is narrower — BenQ hardware only — but in return it gives you features BetterDisplay simply cannot reach, like named ICC colour profiles stored on the monitor itself, hardware-level PIP/PBP, and KVM control. Think of them as complementary rather than competing: BetterDisplay for monitor-agnostic tweaks, Display Pilot 2 for the full BenQ feature set.
What are the best Display Pilot 2 alternatives?
For non-BenQ users the short list is BetterDisplay (paid, most feature-rich), MonitorControl (free, open-source, DDC/CI brightness + volume), and Luna Display (adds a Mac or iPad as a secondary display). None of these replicate Display Pilot 2's colour-science integrations on BenQ hardware; they're alternatives only in the sense of providing menu-bar monitor control on other panels.
