Peripherals plugged into a TB dock on Windows 10 Of course, once plugged in, Windows sees the peripherals and connects to them as usual. Viewing attached TB devices on Windows 10 Once approved, the device can then be viewed and managed. Pluggable has a good article on the entire user experience and troubleshooting.Īpproving connection to TB devices on Windows 10 Management actions such as approving or removing a device requires administrator rights on the PC.

With the software installed and a device plugged in, the user sees a message box asking to approve the connection to a Thunderbolt device. The software is actually provided by Intel and available in various downloads on their site. Every OEM should supply Thunderbolt software for download, which for HP PCs is listed as Intel Thunderbolt 3 Secure Connect. Windows PCs equipped with Thunderbolt ports will have the driver and software installed by default, so typically this won’t be an issue however, if you’re resetting the PC or creating a corporate image, you’ll need to install that software. Interestingly, no driver or software was offered by the HP Support Assistant app designed to help end-users keep their HP PCs up to date. After plugging in a TB device, it isn’t recognised and no driver or software is downloaded from Windows Update. Resetting the machine back to defaults strips it right back to the bare essentials, excluding the Thunderbolt driver and software. The default Windows 10 image for this machine is an absolute mess that has a whole lot of software that isn’t required. I’ve been testing connection to my dock on an HP Elitebook x360 G2 that comes equipped with 2 x TB3 ports. Thunderbolt 3 on Windows 10? That is unfortunately not so straight-forward.

If you have more than one device plugged in, ensure they’re plugged into either side of the laptop for best performance. Note that while the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar has 4 Thunderbolt 3 ports, these are divided across 2 busses. MacOS System Report showing Thunderbolt devices MacOS provides a good look at the devices plugged into your TB ports: Maybe that’s OK - the TB target market is likely to be purchasing the Pro line anyway, but Apple isn’t a fan of labelling their ports, so caveat emptor. Here’s Apple’s dirty (not so) secret though - excluding the MacBook Air (and the Mini that comes with TB2), all current Macs have TB3 ports, except for the MacBook. Unpacking and plugging in a Thunderbolt dock with external displays, ethernet, audio etc., on macOS in just about every case will work without installing drivers. This makes sense given that the standard was designed by Intel and Apple. Thunderbolt on macOS just works - plug-in a TB device and off you go. Here’s a quick look at the end-user experience of TB on macOS and Windows. Thunderbolt 3 (and USB-C) are here to provide a single cable for everything, although your experience with this technology will differ depending on your choice of operating system.

Dock macos windows 10