Attached monitors

A group creates virtual displays. It does not create the monitor on your desk, but it can arrange it, and it can decide what resolution it should be in.

Include connected displays

One switch per group, in the group’s options. It decides whether monitors that are physically attached take part in this group’s arrangement.

Off: the group is about its virtual displays only. A connected monitor is left exactly where it is and at whatever resolution it already has.

On: attached monitors appear in the group, are placed where the group says, and can be the group’s main display.

Why you cannot delete them from the group

An attached monitor in a group has no delete command, and that has confused people looking at two displays they never added. The reason is that the group does not own them. It arranges them.

Removing them is done by turning Include connected displays off, which is a property of the group rather than of the row. The rows carry a menu that says so, because a user looking at displays they did not add, with nothing to click, has no way to find the switch that governs them.

Turning the switch off leaves the stored arrangement alone, so turning it back on puts everything where it was.

Setting the resolution

Each attached display in a group offers its own mode list, read from the panel rather than derived, so nothing is offered that the monitor cannot actually do.

Leave unchanged leads the list, and is what a group should say about most monitors. It is also the only entry that stays true when the desk changes.

A recorded mode beats the display’s own: the display says what it is, the group’s entry says what this group wants it to be. A display the group does not claim is parked where it is and never resized, because a group has no business reaching into a monitor it has no opinion about.

Keeping the resolution

Beside the mode list is the switch that puts it back when something else changes it. It is disabled until the group has a resolution to keep, with a help string saying so.

$ mdctl protect physical:A1B2C3D4-5E6F-4071-8293-A4B5C6D7E8F9 on
Protecting "Studio Display" in "Home".

Protection covers what it restores and when it gives up.

Capturing

mdctl capture and the Capture Current Layout button write back where every display sits and what mode it is in, including attached monitors the group claims.

$ mdctl capture
Captured the layout into "Home".

What capture never does is change which displays a group contains. Membership is a decision; the arrangement is an observation.

Next

• Protection for keeping the mode you just set.
• Groups for everything else a group holds.