autorandr.sh

A really really simple script to reliably manage monitors with profiles

Introduction

This is a super simple script to manage monitor configurations easily and reliably. Its current features were taken from phillipberndt/autorandr, but this script is different in that it can more reliably save monitor configurations as profiles. It does so by not actually trying to save a configuration on its own. Instead, arandr is used to save configurations.

Another difference is that it was written in bash for simplicity. Also, the script makes no attempt to respond to monitor hot-plug events at all, so it needs to be manually called when monitors are added or removed. The rest is fairly similar to the original project's way of doing things.

Installation

Installation is super easy, just copy this script in your path or wherever you want to execute it.

A fun use-case is to use this with highly customizable window-managers like i3, bspwm, etc. You can add this repository as a git submodule to your dotfiles under a bin/ directory or something similar. Then just add the submodule's directory to your path and use autorandr.sh in your window-manager's config to automatically configure monitors.

Dependencies

The only dependencies are xrandr and arandr, which are very commonly packaged in distributions.

Arch Linux

# pacman -S xorg-xrandr arandr

Ubuntu

# apt install x11-xserver-utils arandr

Usage

There are very few commands for this script because it only implements a small amount of features, but they are the most important.

As is mentioned in the introduction, this script should be added to your path if you need it to be executed as is shown below.

Options

$ autorandr.sh [--save, --load, --change, --detected]

• --save profile_name

This option saves the current monitor configuration to a profile called profile_name by first invoking arandr to save the configuration and then getting all the EDIDs to fingerprint the chosen configuration.

• --load profile_name

This option looks for a profile with the provided name and runs the script that was created by arandr after the --save command if it exists. If a profile that does not exist is passed to --load, the script exits with an error.

• --change

This option gets a fingerprint for the current display configuration and tries to match it to a fingerprint in any saved profile. If there's a match, the script created by arandr with the --save is run. With no match, the command xrandr --auto is called, which uses all connected monitors.

• --detected

This option will do the same thing as --change, but it won't change the monitor configuration. Instead, it just outputs the name of the profile that was found.

Use-Cases

This can be used as a stand-alone script to manage displays, but it's well suited for use with a bare-bones window-manager like bspwm. To use it with a window-manager, a good option is to call the script in the configuration itself, or a pre-hook, if one is available. First, call autorandr.sh --change to update the monitor configuration and then use autorandr.sh --detected to get the name of the chosen profile. That way, it's possible to make changes to the window-manager's configuration depending on the selected profile. For example, it's possible to configure bspwm desktops depending on the selected profile.

An example of this use-case is my own dotfiles marier-nico/dotfiles.