autorandr

Automatically select a display configuration based on connected devices

Branch information

This is a compatible Python rewrite of wertarbyte/autorandr.

The original wertarbyte/autorandr tree is unmaintained, with lots of open pull requests and issues. I forked it and merged what I thought were the most important changes. If you are searching for that version, see the legacy branch. Note that the Python version is better suited for non-standard configurations, like if you use --transform or --reflect. If you use auto-disper, you have to use the bash version, as there is no disper support in the Python version (yet). Both versions use a compatible configuration file format, so you can, to some extent, switch between them. I will maintain the legacy branch until @wertarbyte finds the time to maintain his branch again.

If you are interested in why there are two versions around, see #7, #8 and especially #12 if you are unhappy with this version and would like to contibute to the bash version.

License information and authors

autorandr is available under the terms of the GNU General Public License (version 3).

Contributors to this version of autorandr are:

• Alexander Wirt
• Chris Dunder
• Daniel Hahler
• Maciej Sitarz
• Mathias Svensson
• Matthew R Johnson
• Nazar Mokrynskyi
• Phillip Berndt
• Rasmus Wriedt Larsen
• Stefan Tomanek
• Timo Bingmann
• Tomasz Bogdal
• Victor Häggqvist
• stormc
• tachylatus
• andersonjacob
• Simon Wydooghe

Installation/removal

You can use the autorandr.py script as a stand-alone binary. If you'd like to install it as a system-wide application, there is a Makefile included that also places some configuration files in appropriate directories such that autorandr is invoked automatically when a monitor is connected or removed, the system wakes up from suspend, or a user logs into an X11 session.

For Debian-based distributions (including Ubuntu) it is recommended to call make deb to obtain a package that can be installed and removed with dpkg.

On Arch Linux, there is an aur package available.

On other distributions you can install autorandr by calling make install and remove it by calling make uninstall. Run make without arguments to obtain a list of what exactly will be installed.

We appreciate packaging scripts for other distributions, please file a pull request if you write one.

How to use

Save your current display configuration and setup with:

autorandr --save mobile

Connect an additional display, configure your setup and save it:

autorandr --save docked

Now autorandr can detect which hardware setup is active:

$ autorandr
  mobile
  docked (detected)

To automatically reload your setup, just append --change to the command line

To manually load a profile, you can use the --load <profile> option.

autorandr tries to avoid reloading an identical configuration. To force the (re)configuration, apply --force.

To prevent a profile from being loaded, place a script call block in its directory. The script is evaluated before the screen setup is inspected, and in case of it returning a value of 0 the profile is skipped. This can be used to query the status of a docking station you are about to leave.

If no suitable profile can be identified, the current configuration is kept. To change this behaviour and switch to a fallback configuration, specify --default <profile>. The system-wide installation of autorandr by default calls autorandr with a parameter --default default. There are three special, virtual configurations called horizontal, vertical and common. They automatically generate a configuration that incorporates all screens connected to the computer. You can symlink default to one of these names in your configuration directory to have autorandr use any of them as the default configuration without you having to change the system-wide configuration.

Another script called postswitch can be placed in the directory ~/.config/autorandr (or ~/.autorandr if you have an old installation) as well as in all profile directories: The scripts are executed after a mode switch has taken place and can notify window managers or other applications about it. The same holds for preswitch, which is executed before the switch takes place, and postsave, which is executed after a profile was stored/altered.

If you experience issues with xrandr being executed too early after connecting a new monitor, then you can create a script predetect, which will be executed before autorandr attempts to run xrandr. Place e.g. sleep 1 into that file to make autorandr wait a second before running xrandr.

All scripts can also be placed in any of the $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS. In addition to the script names themselves, any executables in subdirectories named script_name.d (e.g. postswitch.d) are executed as well. In scripts, some of autorandr's state is exposed as environment variables prefixed with AUTORANDR_. The most useful one is $AUTORANDR_CURRENT_PROFILE.

Changelog

• 2016-11-15 New script hook, predetect
• 2016-10-03 Install a desktop file to /etc/xdg/autostart by default