Friday, July 24, 2009

Using xrandr to change screen resolution and orientation

X RandR is a useful tool to configure display ports, display modes and properties such as orientation, reflection and DPI.

Some simple usage of xrandr
$ xrandr -v (Server reports RandR version 1.3)
$ xrandr -q (query what screens are connected)
$ xrandr -s 1280x800 (screen resolution)
$ xrandr -o inverted (orientation inverted, left, right, normal)

Do note that for xrandr -0 , your screen might freeze after the command, you may want to use xrandr --verbose to check the error.

To extend xrandr to utilise and join 2 monitor together, you may want to look at http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Xorg_RandR_1.2 for more information

1 comment:

alsuren said...

Another little trick: xrandr --auto will try to automatically set the best resolution for you. This is good if you're plugging in a new screen.

The only useful thing that the linked article says is points out the bug that means you can't have screens larger than what you have attached at start-time unless you have a "virtual" line in your configs. Everything else you can work out from reading xrandr --help