How to remote desktop fullscreen RDP with just SOME of your multiple monitors

I saw this over on the Microsoft Remote Desktop Uservoice

Allow ability to choose subset of local monitors for RDP session (full screen)

Allow ability to select a subset of current monitors with full screen. Currently can choose all or 1 but cannot choose for instance 2 of 3 (full screen).

That seems useful, I wish it did that. I know about this checkbox that says "Use all my monitors" but I can't say just use 1 and 2 but not 3, right?

Turns out that you CAN span n monitors but it's just buried/internal and has no UI.

Save your RDP file, and open it in Notepad. Everyone's RDP file is different but yours may look like this:

full address:s:x.x.x.x:3389
prompt for credentials:i:1
administrative session:i:1
screen mode id:i:2
span monitors:i:1
use multimon:i:1
selectedmonitors:s:0,1

I can put on selectedmonitors:s:x,y and then use the zero-based numbers to indicate my monitors. To get a list of monitors, I can run mstsc /l to LIST out all my monitors on my machine. I can also use mstsc /multimon as a command line to use multiple monitors.

So I set my selectedmonitors:0,1 to use my left and middle monitor and skip my right one.

In this picture, I'm RDP'ed into a remote Windows 10 machine in Azure on Monitors 1 and 2 while Monitor 3 is my local one.

Sweet.

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