darkfishy / displaymode

a command-line utility for changing the display resolution on macOS

displaymode

displaymode is a command-line utility for changing the display resolution on Mac OS X. It will work on Mac OS X 10.6 or later.

Installation

With Xcode

If you have Xcode (or the Xcode command line tools) installed, it's best to compile it yourself. From the terminal:

1. git clone https://github.com/p00ya/displaymode.git
2. cd displaymode
3. clang -std=c11 -framework CoreFoundation -framework CoreGraphics -o displaymode displaymode.c

Without Xcode

If you don't have Xcode installed, then you can download the binary (note this is not a zip file) then give the OS permission to run it. From the terminal:

1. curl -LO https://github.com/p00ya/displaymode/releases/latest/download/displaymode
2. xattr -d com.apple.quarantine displaymode
3. chmod a+x displaymode
4. codesign -f -s "-" -v displaymode

Usage

To change the resolution of the main display to 1440x900, run the command:

./displaymode t 1440 900

To change the resolution of the secondary display to 1440x900, run the command:

./displaymode t 1440 900 1

You can get a list of active displays and available resolutions by running:

./displaymode d

The output will be a table like:

Display 0 (MAIN):
2560 x 1600 @60.0Hz *
1280 x 800 @60.0Hz
2880 x 1800 @60.0Hz
640 x 480 @60.0Hz !

Display 1:
800 x 600 @75.0Hz *

where each row is the width x height in pixels. * indicates the current mode, and ! indicates modes that are not usable for the desktop.

Other options

./displaymode h prints a summary of the options.

./displaymode v prints the version and copyright notice.