I recently launched some macOS Shortcuts in Lunar (https://lunar.fyi/#shortcuts) that can arrange monitors in pre-defined layouts like:
2 Screens Vertically ■̳̲
2 Screens Horizontally ⫍⃮݄⫎⃯
4 Screens in a 3-above-1 configuration ⫍⃮■̳̻⫎⃯
3 Screens in a 2-above-1 configuration ⫍‗⫎
3 Screens Horizontally ⫍⃮▬̲⫎⃯
It's not the same as DisplayPlacer but for a lot of people this could be enough. They are free and can be used without a Lunar Pro license.
For those having trouble with monitors being swapped around by the OS, there's also a Swap screen positions action in Shortcuts that you can bind to a hotkey to quickly fix this. It even swaps rotations, which is especially useful for those using portrait monitors (one at 90° and one at 270°).
Lunar is awesome. Just FYI there is a link in the following text which doesn't work, so i can't actually see an examples.
> Check out the "Shortcuts" page to find some useful pre-made shortcuts that you can add with a click.
Is it possible to snapshot exact screen positioning using shortcuts? I'd like to take a snapshot of all my settings (orientation, refresh rate, hdr settings, and _exact_ screen positioning) and restore using a shortcut when ever it changes.
Thanks! That "Shortcuts" page is still WIP, I hoped to launch it the same day I released the update but life happened.
No, Lunar doesn't have that snapshot functionality because it's really hard to make it work for every possible setup. UUIDs can change between connections and the user can be left with an unusable snapshot. Or, because of how the HDMI/DP connection was negotiated, some display modes might not be available until a disconnect/reconnect cyle.
And it's impossible to detect the problem and convey it to the user when it happens, it mostly looks like an app bug no matter what I try.
But I am planning to add it in the future, at least in a rudimentary form.
Currently using displayplacer with BTT to make keyboard shortcuts.
When moving to different hoteling desks, sometimes the laptop is on the left of the additional monitor and other times on the right. Now I have two keybinds that orient my layout. I've used Lunar specifically for the dim below 0 functionality, (thanks for the ongoing development), I'll have to try the new shortcuts to see if they can replace displayplacer.
The one feature I really want for window management on macOS is the ability to split fullscreen applications horizontally, for my vertical monitor. macOS lets you split a fullscreen app vertically so you can have two on the same screen, but when a monitor is oriented vertically you can still only split the screen vertically, not horizontally. Sigh.
I will also +1 this as an i3wm user. I do use displayplacer and yabai together though. I have two identical external monitors that don't behave well with MacOS. Apparently the monitor's unique id's are not unique in MacOS. This causes MacOS to get them mixed up any time I disconnect from them. I have a keyboard shortcut that uses displayplacer to toggle between the two monitor valid configurations.
Since we're on the topic of tiling manager, I'm still using ShiftIt on my old macbook and I still think it's one of the best window manager since it allows you bind keys to particular actions and stays out of the way with minimal configuration. It's not being maintained though.
I noticed this as well. Now if i have to rearrange i try to remember to open spotlight (CMD+Space) and type "arrange".. will take you straight to the option.
I was stoked to see this, unfortunately, this has gone 4 years without a release (last released in 2019)
The issue log has several issues where Ventura users mention it not working at all, on M1 architectures. Can anyone on an M1 or M2 confirm this works for them? I'm still on Intel.
Great timing. Today I discovered that the iMac 24" screen can't be rotated. I have it on a VESA mount, so I can rotate it physically, but screen rotation settings are inaccessible (even with the Option key) via system settings. When I attempt rotation via displayplacer (tool in OP), it just complains that it "could not find res". There's a surprising lack of good search results on this. Seems to be related to the iMac overheating, but that's information coming from a random forum post that I found, not from Apple.
Edit: found Display Rotation Menu via DisplayPlacer Github issues, which is so far the only tool that worked for me.
Do any of these methods work to rotate a Sidecar display? Right now I’m using BetterDisplay to creat a dummy and then rotate and stream that dummy to the Sidecar display, but it’s a bit unwieldy and sometimes unreliable (due to an Apple bug apparently).
This hasn't been updated in a while. What I really want from this kind of tool is the ability to take a snapshot of my ALL display settings, and just click something on my desktop or bind a keyboard shortcut, or run a command which will restore it - exactly how it should be. This would include, exact screen positioning, refresh rate, resolutions etc.
I don't know what triggers it, but MacOS is really bad at changing these settings if you use multiple displays through the week (e.g. different coworking spaces).
It might not have been updated but it works perfectly. Also it does everything you just asked for except invocation (you have to setup the keybind yourself, for myself I have an Alfred workflow I run to do it).
Here is an example of a displayplacer command (it will generate this for you based on your current config, you just need to save and re-run it to get back to that state):
The closest I've found to doing this is Mosaic. I paid for it because it was so useful. You can bind keyboard shortcuts and make any selected window snap to a particular screen and size. With the introduction of Ventura's Stage Manager (which is a poorly disguised Task Bar that should be at the bottom of the screen occupying all the unused real estate next to/around the dock), I can use Mosaic to snap my windows to the fullest size possible while still being able to see Stage Manager and this gives me a window management experience on Mac that is almost as good as Windows.
The problem that I have with my M1 is that I have 2 HP monitors with USB-C connectors and when I plug the USB/C Thunderbolt cable in to the monitor, often its not recognized and I often need to power off the machine, the monitor and or switch the ports in some combination, I really wish I could just have a manual probe I could run reliably to tell macOS,the monitor that they are connected. Any ideas?
As far as I understand, there is a low level race condition here. The order that the monitors come alive and initialize with the OS is non deterministic. This can cause the left monitor and the right monitor, for example, to swap IDs.
Readit News
For those having trouble with monitors being swapped around by the OS, there's also a Swap screen positions action in Shortcuts that you can bind to a hotkey to quickly fix this. It even swaps rotations, which is especially useful for those using portrait monitors (one at 90° and one at 270°).
> Check out the "Shortcuts" page to find some useful pre-made shortcuts that you can add with a click.
Is it possible to snapshot exact screen positioning using shortcuts? I'd like to take a snapshot of all my settings (orientation, refresh rate, hdr settings, and _exact_ screen positioning) and restore using a shortcut when ever it changes.
No, Lunar doesn't have that snapshot functionality because it's really hard to make it work for every possible setup. UUIDs can change between connections and the user can be left with an unusable snapshot. Or, because of how the HDMI/DP connection was negotiated, some display modes might not be available until a disconnect/reconnect cyle.
And it's impossible to detect the problem and convey it to the user when it happens, it mostly looks like an app bug no matter what I try.
But I am planning to add it in the future, at least in a rudimentary form.
However I just saw that the project is no longer maintained as of... two days ago ! I guess I'll have to find an alternative down the road.
Unfortunately, with Ventura, they now hid the arrangement in a separate options window that takes extra clicks to reach. A step backwards :/
Unfortunately the new replacement allows them to not think very hard about how it's designed, just dump some everything in a list.
The issue log has several issues where Ventura users mention it not working at all, on M1 architectures. Can anyone on an M1 or M2 confirm this works for them? I'm still on Intel.
I have an occasional issue where one of my external displays switches from 60 Hz to 40 Hz, and I use displayplacer to toggle the refresh rate to reset the monitor back to 60: https://github.com/jacobwgillespie/dotfiles/blob/main/bin/fi...
Edit: found Display Rotation Menu via DisplayPlacer Github issues, which is so far the only tool that worked for me.
Source code in the same repo: https://github.com/alin23/mac-utils/blob/main/RotateDisplay....
As long as the system reports `true` for `canChangeOrientation`, then the CLI should work.
Lunar (https://lunar.fyi/) can also do that and provides some useful hotkeys if you happen to rotate displays often: https://files.alinpanaitiu.com/2106f2eac02df0c3eec379ef19965...
I don't know what triggers it, but MacOS is really bad at changing these settings if you use multiple displays through the week (e.g. different coworking spaces).
Here is an example of a displayplacer command (it will generate this for you based on your current config, you just need to save and re-run it to get back to that state):
https://getlater.app/