Dear Eyal, For the "This means that if my laptop is suspended and I want to disconnect the external monitor and put it in my bag for later use, I need to first wake it up, unlock it, launch the script to turn the laptop monitor on, and then put it away. " why not have a script that, on resuming from suspension, calls your already working script? This should work even if your screen is locked. I have a very ugly kludge in a script that does that. I no longer use more than one monitor at a time (my neck did not like it), but I work either with the laptop connected to an external monitor or just with the laptop monitor, and I can easily switch from one to another with suspend events (and all suspend events include locking) in between. When I resume from suspension, the script is called so that it uses the external monitor if the laptop is plugged to it (and the monitor is on), or the laptop otherwise. My script is called by a service file I placed as /etc/systemd/system/configure_monitors.service (I can send you the service file and my script kludge, but the later is just a bunch of calls to xrandr to figure out what is connected, and then configure the screens). Best, R. On Fri, 09-July-2021, at 16:14:54, Eyal Erez wrote:

Hi,

I often use multiple displays. Here are some configurations that I've used with my laptop: 1. Laptop monitor only 2. External monitor only (laptop lid closed) 3. External and laptop monitor at the same time. 4. Two external monitors (laptop lid closed).

In order to show display correctly (which monitor is to the right/left of which and which is on/off) and shift trayer around to the right monitor and position, I've written a script that parses the output of xrandr, figures out if the laptop lid is open or not, then calls xrandr again to activate the right monitors and kills and relaunches trayer and places it in the correct position. I launch this script from a keybinding configured in xmonad.hs.

This works, however, it has several disadvantages. The first is that adding a new configuration is a bit tedious -- this doesn't happen very often so it's not a huge deal. The other is that I can only activate the script if my screen is unlocked. This means that if my laptop is suspended and I want to disconnect the external monitor and put it in my bag for later use, I need to first wake it up, unlock it, launch the script to turn the laptop monitor on, and then put it away. Otherwise, I'll be staring at a blank screen when I turn it on and have to guess what to press to unlock and use the script.

I was wondering how others deal with this challenge? Are there other, more well-built tools, than the script I have to do this more robustly and automatically?

Thank you,

-- Ramon Diaz-Uriarte Department of Biochemistry, Lab B-25 Facultad de Medicina Universidad Autónoma de Madrid Arzobispo Morcillo, 4 28029 Madrid Spain Phone: +34-91-497-2412 Email: rdiaz02@gmail.com ramon.diaz@iib.uam.es https://ligarto.org/rdiaz

Hello :) My solution: I have a keybinding which rotates through monitor-configurations. When plug-in a new monitor, or unplug a monitor or so, I keep pressing that keybinding until it fits the new monitor setup. It's not beautiful code, but here it is: This is the keybinding: ``` ("M-S-s" , do ownState <- XS.get let newMonitorLayoutIndex = (monitorLayoutIndex ownState + 1) `mod` (length Host.monitorLayouts) spawn (monitorLayouts !! newMonitorLayoutIndex) XS.put (ownState { monitorLayoutIndex = newMonitorLayoutIndex }) refresh) ``` The `monitorLayouts` variable is just a list of xrandr-commands as strings. (I generate those via `arandr`.) The monitor-state is a state-property: ``` data OwnState = OwnState { monitorLayoutIndex :: Int } deriving Typeable instance ExtensionClass OwnState where initialValue = OwnState { orientation = OrientB , keyboardLayout = De , monitorLayoutIndex = 0 } ``` I show the monitor-state in my dock, dzen2: ``` ownPPConfig statusbar = def { ppExtras = [ Just . show . monitorLayoutIndex <$> XS.get ] } ``` Kind regards Mekeor 2021-07-09 / 17:14 / oneself@gmail.com:

Hi,

I often use multiple displays. Here are some configurations that I've used with my laptop: 1. Laptop monitor only 2. External monitor only (laptop lid closed) 3. External and laptop monitor at the same time. 4. Two external monitors (laptop lid closed).

In order to show display correctly (which monitor is to the right/left of which and which is on/off) and shift trayer around to the right monitor and position, I've written a script that parses the output of xrandr, figures out if the laptop lid is open or not, then calls xrandr again to activate the right monitors and kills and relaunches trayer and places it in the correct position. I launch this script from a keybinding configured in xmonad.hs.

This works, however, it has several disadvantages. The first is that adding a new configuration is a bit tedious -- this doesn't happen very often so it's not a huge deal. The other is that I can only activate the script if my screen is unlocked. This means that if my laptop is suspended and I want to disconnect the external monitor and put it in my bag for later use, I need to first wake it up, unlock it, launch the script to turn the laptop monitor on, and then put it away. Otherwise, I'll be staring at a blank screen when I turn it on and have to guess what to press to unlock and use the script.

I was wondering how others deal with this challenge? Are there other, more well-built tools, than the script I have to do this more robustly and automatically?

Thank you,