autorandr/README.md

autorandr

Automatically select a display configuration based on connected devices

Branch information

This is a compatible Python rewrite of wertarbyte/autorandr. Contributions for bash-completion, fd.o/XDG autostart, Nitrogen, pm-utils, and systemd can be found under contrib.

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 contribute 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:

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

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.

autorandr is also packaged in the nix package manager repositories.

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.

If you prefer pip over your package manager, you can install autorandr with:

sudo pip install "git+http://github.com/phillipberndt/autorandr#egg=autorandr"

or simply

sudo pip install autorandr

if you prefer to use a stable version.

Automatically generated packages versions are available from the openSUSE build service.

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:

$ autorandr --change

To manually load a profile:

$ autorandr --load <profile>

or simply:

$ autorandr <profile>

autorandr tries to avoid reloading an identical configuration. To force the (re)configuration:

$ autorandr --load <profile> --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.

Hook scripts

Three more scripts can be placed in the configuration directory (as (as defined by the XDG spec, usually ~/.config/autorandr or ~/.autorandr if you have an old installation for user configuration and /etc/xdg/autorandr for system wide configuration):

• postswitch is executed after a mode switch has taken place. This can be used to notify window managers or other applications about the switch.
• preswitch is executed before a mode switch takes place.
• postsave is executed after a profile was stored or altered.
• predetect is executed before autorandr attempts to run xrandr.

These scripts must be executable and can be placed directly in the configuration directory, where they will always be executed, or in the profile subdirectories, where they will only be executed on changes regarding that specific profile.

Instead (or in addition) to these scripts, you can also place as many executable files as you like in subdirectories called script_name.d (e.g. postswitch.d).

If a script with the same name occurs multiple times, user configuration takes precedence over system configuration (as specified by the XDG spec) and profile configuration over general configuration.

As a concrete example, suppose you have the files

• /etc/xdg/autorandr/postswitch
• ~/.config/autorandr/postswitch
• ~/.config/autorandr/postswitch.d/notify-herbstluftwm
• ~/.config/autorandr/docked/postswitch

and switch from mobile to docked. Then ~/.config/autorandr/docked/postswitch is executed, since the profile specific configuration takes precedence, and ~/.config/autorandr/postswitch.d/notify-herbstluftwm is executed, since it has a unique name.

If you switch back from docked to mobile, ~/.config/autorandr/postswitch is executed instead of the mobile specific postswitch.

In these scripts, some of autorandr's state is exposed as environment variables prefixed with AUTORANDR_. The most useful one is $AUTORANDR_CURRENT_PROFILE.

If you experience issues with xrandr being executed too early after connecting a new monitor, then you can use a predetect script to delay the execution. Write e.g. sleep 1 into that file to make autorandr wait a second before running xrandr.

Changelog

autorandr 1.2

• 2017-07-16 Skip --panning unless it is required (See #72)
• 2017-10-13 Add clone-largest virtual profile

autorandr 1.1

• 2017-06-07 Call systemctl with --no-block from udev rule (See #61)
• 2017-01-20 New script hook, predetect
• 2017-01-18 Accept comments (lines starting with #) in config/setup files

autorandr 1.0

• 2016-12-07 Tag the current code as version 1.0.0; see github issue #54
• 2016-10-03 Install a desktop file to /etc/xdg/autostart by default