By active display do you mean digital dash? I have my digital dash set to have the left revometer with the gear selection in it and the right speedometer with the current song playing. Just keep smashing the view button and the left and right selection buttons on the right hand set of steering wheel buttons.
If you have a DSG, you have to put up with D or R, there is no setting for which gear your in. If you put DSG into sport then you get S1 S2 S3 ect. I don't know about manual gearbox.
Interesting it’s not possible to do what @Chriz1 has asked. My 2020 Polo GTI+ with DSG transmission has an AID / digital instrument display (not the same version AID as the one in the mk8 Golf) and it’s possible to display the the mode (D, M or S) along with the gear - e.g. D1, D2, D3 etc.; that’s the way it came from the factory.
Yes, and the Golf Mk7 DSG also displayed the gear when in Drive. The fact that the Mk8 shows the gear number in Sport mode indicates that it may be just a programming issue in the all new Mk8 software. Maybe it’ll be fixed in an update, although it’s probably not their top priority given the other problems to be fixed.