The definitive guide to screen resolution?

Thanks, Adam, I changed the link in my post above

Thanks, Stefan! I can confirm that your first method works with Jaguar as well.

I’ve been trying to reduce it to just one shell script, but I’m not an expert. The following works on both my Jaguar and Tiger machines:

tell (do shell script "w=$(defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver DisplaySets | grep -w 'Width'); h=$(defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver DisplaySets | grep -w 'Height'); echo $w $h;") to set screenRes to {word 3 as integer, word ((count words) div 2 + 3) as integer}

It would be great if it didn’t have to include two ‘defaults reads’, but I haven’t been able to work out how to get by with just one.

The ‘grep’ in Tiger has a ‘-m’ option which allows you to specify how many matches are returned. This would allow a slight simplification of the AppleScript code, but doesn’t work in Jaguar:

tell (do shell script "w=$(defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver DisplaySets | grep -wm1 'Width'); h=$(defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver DisplaySets | grep -wm1 'Height'); echo $w $h;") to set screenRes to {word 3 as integer, word 6 as integer}

Hi, Jacques.

Thanks! Those both work on both systems and are more compact than “ and nearly twice as fast as “ my effort. The ‘grep’ version may possibly be very slightly faster than the ‘awk’, but it’s too close a call to be sure. They’re still several times slower than Jon’s Commands, but since that’s apparently not going to be ported for Intel machines, I’m keeping an eye on the alternatives!

set screenRes to screen size of beginning of (screen list starting with main screen) -- Needs Jon's Commands.

Elegant as these solutions are, I still have to use cscreen because I have two screens. :mad:

No problem, Adam, this returns the values for two screens ({x1, y1, x2, y2})

tell (do shell script "defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver DisplaySets | awk '/ Height =/||/ Width =/'") to set screenRes to {word 6 as integer, word 3 as integer, word 12 as integer, word 9 as integer}

It does indeed, Stefan!

Someday, I’ll have to revise my Code Exchange submission on dual screens

I see that the very first key in the “com.apple.windowserver” domain is “CGSInterocitorSelectMode”. An interocitor, of course, is an alien device from the 1954 Sci-Fi film This Island Earth. There are quite a few people having fun with it on the Net. I quite enjoyed this effort. (Follow the “About this page” link for more information.)

When I read the link you gave and look back at CGSInterocitor’s value, mine is an integer set to zero. Is that universal or does it vary from country to country? If the latter, then it’s a quite suitable name for identifying “aliens” presuming the “0” means USA.

A cursory search through Apple Docs did not find much about com.apple.windowserver, however, and nothing about CGSInterocitor, so I have no idea what it’s for.

I saw Stefan’s solution, but does this work?:

(do shell script "defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver DisplaySets | sed -Ee '/^ *(Height|Width)/!d' -e 's/[^[:digit:]]*//g'")'s paragraphs

No. It’s “0” here too “ and we’re not aliens.

Hi, Qwerty.

It errors in Jaguar (“Illegal operation”) but returns a list of numeric Unicode texts in Tiger. For a single screen, we’d need something like this:

tell (do shell script "defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver DisplaySets | sed -Ee '/^ *(Height|Width)/!d' -e 's/[^[:digit:]]*//g'") to set screenRes to {paragraph 2 as integer, paragraph 1 as integer}

Apparently Canadians aren’t either (I’m happy to say) :lol:

Interestingly enough, after posting that, I tried changing the value to “1” to see what would happen and actually turned into an alien for a while. Fortunately, I was able to slither into a vat of dinitrogen tetrasulphide while I restored the backup and, after a good night’s sleep and a cup of tea, am apparently no worse off for the experience. But thank goodness I didn’t try the “2” setting! :o

:D:lol::lol:

After fiddling around for a short while, I’ve finally settled on this. It should hopefully return a list of records, but unfortunately I’m unable to test it on more than one display.

run script ("{" & (do shell script "defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.windowserver DisplaySets | sed -Ee '/^ *(Height|Width)/!d' -e 's/Height = (.*);/{height: \\1,/' -e 's/Width = (.*);/width: \\1},/' -e 's/ *$/¬/'")'s text 1 thru -3 & "}")

I presume that, as the last one died of an obscure error, this too will fail on Jaguar.

Edit: Thanks Stefan, my fault. The script has been changed.

Hi Qwerty,

starting the script with two displays I get an runtime error (Expected ", " or “}” but found “{”.)

FWIW, Extra Suites may come in handy when changing screenresolutions AND depth on a fly (here for single screen):

tell application "Extra Suites" to set g to ES list screen resolutions screen 0

set y to {}
repeat with x in g
	if x is g's last item as string then set x to " depth " & x
	set y to y & my substitute(x, "x", "*")
end repeat
tell application "System Events" to set fApp to some application process whose frontmost is true
beep 2
tell fApp
	activate
	set fWd to name of window 1
	set fWd2 to name of front window
	set nRes to (choose from list y default items {item 3 of y} with prompt "Set screen resolution to: ")
end tell
if nRes = false then return
set nRes to nRes as string
set {nH, nV, dept} to {nRes's word 1, nRes's word 3, nRes's word 5} --return {nH, nV}

tell application "Extra Suites"
	set sInfo to ES screen info
	if width of sInfo ≠ nH and height of sInfo ≠ nV then
		ES set screen resolution width nH height nV depth dept
	end if
	set sInfo to ES screen info
	set {W, H} to {sInfo's width, sInfo's height}
end tell

tell fApp
	activate
	try
		open window 1
	end try
	try
		open window fWd
	end try
	try
		open window fWd2
	end try
	return name of window 1
end tell

on substitute(theText, toReplace, newText)
	set AppleScript's text item delimiters to the toReplace
	set the allTheText to every text item of theText
	set AppleScript's text item delimiters to the newText
	set theText to the allTheText as string
	set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ""
	return theText
end substitute

Stefan, I’ve updated the script, so hopefully it now works for you.

yes, it works perfectly now with two displays

An AppleScript list of records! Terrific! The list I get on my Tiger machine contains seventeen records, the first of which and six more refer to the single monitor’s current resolution. The remaining ten refer to another resolution to which I’ve set it in the past. None of the other possible resolutions are included, so this can’t be the right file for that information. Only the first one or two entries can thus have any relevance.

The script still doesn’t work with Jaguar, I’m afraid. But I must apologise to you for some bad information. The error isn’t “Illegal operation” but “illegal option”. (Perhaps the interocitor interfered with my brainwaves the other evening!) In full, the message is:

I don’t know if that’s any help.