Ophthalmic surgical systems and methods for displaying graphical user interfaces in ophthalmic surgical systems are disclosed. An example ophthalmic surgical system has alternative setup conditions, and a host computer is configured to detect the setup condition and to display on a display screen a graphical user interface corresponding to the detected setup condition. The alternative setup conditions may be based upon a configuration of an ophthalmic surgical console and/or based upon which type of fluidics cassette is installed on the ophthalmic surgical console. In some embodiments, the host computer is configured to display on the display screen a graphical user interface that graphically indicates the instrument ports that are available and/or that are not available for instrument connections in the detected setup condition.