4 Things to Know About Daisy-Chaining Thunderbolt 4 on a MacBook Air

Daisy-chaining works, but you only get two ports The MacBook Air has two Thunderbolt/USB4 ports, and they share bandwidth with each other and display output. That’s the real bottleneck, not the daisy-chaining protocol.

Each port can theoretically support up to six devices Thunderbolt 4 allows chains of six devices per port, but you’ll hit performance limits long before that due to shared bandwidth.

Bandwidth gets split quickly Each port has 40 Gbps total. A single high-res monitor can use 20–30 Gbps, leaving little for storage drives or other devices.

Use a hub for serious multi-device setups For peripherals like docks or audio interfaces, daisy-chaining is fine. But if you need multiple displays and fast storage, a Thunderbolt 4 hub or dock is a better bet.