Shell – Configure GNOME/Wayland display configuration from command line

display-settingsgnome-shellgnome3wayland

Is there a possibility to configure the monitor configuration of Mutter/GNOME shell from command line in a Wayland Session or is that not implemented until now?

I have tried to change some things via the xrandr command (but it seems obvious to me, that this can not work as the "x" in xrandr indictates that it is a tool for the XServer).

This command has no effect (using Fedora 23 / GNOME 3.18.2)

xrandr --output XWAYLAND0 --off

However the included gnome settings dialog for the display configuration is working. A hint to a configuration file or a command line tool would be nice…

Best Answer

The Mutter docs specify the interface with dbus as @don_crissti has pointed out in comments:

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/blob/master/src/org.gnome.Mutter.DisplayConfig.xml

You need to find out your configuration serial and your connector:

configuration serial is the first number shown in 

gdbus call \
--session \
--dest=org.gnome.Mutter.DisplayConfig \
--object-path /org/gnome/Mutter/DisplayConfig \
--method org.gnome.Mutter.DisplayConfig.GetResources

in my case that is uint32 3, so I use 3

connector: it shows in ls /sys/class/drm, in my case by trial and error I found that card0-DP-2 was the correct one so I use DP-2. You can also try to make sense of the output of DisplayConfig.GetResources and use that.

By setting the other options, the final command becomes like this:

gdbus call \
--session \
--dest=org.gnome.Mutter.DisplayConfig \
--object-path /org/gnome/Mutter/DisplayConfig \
--method org.gnome.Mutter.DisplayConfig.ApplyMonitorsConfig \
3 1 "[(0, 0, 1, 0, true, [('eDP-1', '1920x1080@60.0', [] )] )]" "[]"

Unfortunately, that does not work for me, even though I am passing the resolution (aka. "mode id") in the right format:

Error: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.InvalidArgs: Invalid mode '1920x1080@60.0' specified
(According to introspection data, you need to pass 'uua(iiduba(ssa{sv}))a{sv}')

EDIT:

I found why, the refresh rate needs to be THE EXACT STRING that DisplayConfig.GetResources is reporting. It does not let you set what you want as refresh rate sadly! So you have to use some arbitrary string like 59.810825347900391 like so:

gdbus call \
--session \
--dest=org.gnome.Mutter.DisplayConfig \
--object-path /org/gnome/Mutter/DisplayConfig \
--method org.gnome.Mutter.DisplayConfig.ApplyMonitorsConfig \
3 1 "[(0, 0, 1, 0, true, [('eDP-1', '1920x1080@59.810825347900391', [] )] )]" "[]"

In conclusion, this is of very limited use. There should be a way of adding display modes, by generating CVT or GTF timings, but it looks like DisplayConfig does not have an interface for that :(

Related Question