Display Manager

A command line tool for recording and restoring Windows display configurations

Use Case

• You have a Windows 8/10 PC with a couple of monitors / flatscreen TVs attached
• You are not always using all of your monitors, instead you like to switch between different display configurations

Usage

This tool is quite minimalistic.

1. Use the Windows display settings dialog to configure your monitors to your liking
2. Run DisplayMan.exe --save MyDisplayConfigA.xml on the command line
3. Configure your monitors in another way
4. Run DisplayMan.exe --save MyDisplayConfigB.xml

Now you have two recorded configurations and you can toggle between them

1. Run DisplayMan.exe --load MyDisplayConfigB.xml
2. Run DisplayMan.exe --load MyDisplayConfigA.xml

It is a good idea to create links (shortcuts) for the different configurations, with nice icons, of course. You can place these links on the desktop or in a toolbar inside the taskbar.

Help Text

Mastersign DisplayManager
-------------------------
Version: 1.1.0

Usage:
  DisplayMan
      With no arguments: Show the current display configuration.
  DisplayMan <file path>
      With one file path as the only argument:
      Load display configuration from XML file persistently.
  DisplayMan [<options>]*
      With one or more options: See descriptions below.

Options:

  -h, --help, -?, /?
      Does print this help text. Ignores all other options.

  -v, --version
      Prints version information. Ignores all other options.

  -i, --info, --show-config
      Show the current display configuration.

  -s, --save, --record <target file>
      Write the current display configuration to an XML file.

  -l, --load, --restore <source file>
      Loads the display configuration from the specified XML file.
      If this option is used, the --reset option is ignored.
      By default, the configuration is loaded temporarily.

  -p, --persistent
      If loading a display configuration, makes the new configuration
      persistent.

  -r, --reset
      Resets the display configuration to the last persistent state.
      Can be used to switch back after loading a display configuration
      temporarily.

Hotkeys

A good combination also, is to run DisplayMan.exe with AutoHotkey.

As a preparation, you need to place a copy of the AutoHotkey executable, named hotkeys.exe, in the same folder as DisplayMan.exe. Then create a AutoHotkey script, named hotkeys.ahk, besides hotkeys.ahk. What is important, is that the script file has the same name as the executable. This way you can just start hotkeys.exe and it will find the AHK script by itself.

To switch to C:\Users\Me\Documents\MyDisplayConfigA.xml by pressing Win + Ctrl + A, you can use the following script (for AutoHotkey version 1.1) as a starting point:

#NoEnv
SendMode Input
SetWorkingDir %A_ScriptDir%

SwitchToDisplayConfig(configFile)
{
    run, "%A_ScriptDir%\DisplayMan.exe" --load "%configFile%", %A_ScriptDir%, Min
}

#^A::SwitchToDisplayConfig("C:\Users\Me\Documents\MyDisplayConfigA.xml")

Now place a link (shortcut) for hotkeys.exe in your startmenus autorun folder, and you can use the hotkey(s) even after a reboot.

Technical Insight

This tool makes use of the Windows API for Connecting and Configuring Displays. This API is available since Windows 7. It only uses the methods QueryDisplayConfig, GetDisplayConfigBufferSize and SetDisplayConfig in the User32.dll. It does nothing more then to query the current configuration and store it with the .NET XML serialization into a file. For restore, it just loads the configuration with .NET XML deserializaton and passes them to the Windows API.

Acknowledgements

After spending quite some time with the older API (EnumDisplayDevices, ChangeDisplaySettings, ...) I finally found the question of Erti-Chris Eelmaa with the answer from Stephen Martin and edits from Lennart and David Heffernan on StackOverflow. The rest was easy. Thanks a lot guys, you saved my day!

License

This project is released under the MIT license.

Copyright © by Tobias Kiertscher [email protected].