Easily change between laptop and external displays in i3 + dmenu

display.sh

#!/bin/bash                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    
# This script is intended to make switching between laptop and external displays easier when using i3+dmenu                                                                                                                                                    
# To run this script, map it to some shortcut in your i3 config, e.g:                                                                                                                                                                                          
# bindsym $mod+p exec --no-startup-id $config/display.sh                                                                                                                                                                                                       
# IMPORTANT: run chmod +x on the script to make it executable                                                                                                                                                                                                  
# The result is 4 options appearing in dmenu, from which you can choose                                                                                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
# This is your default laptop screen, detect by running `xrandr`                                                                                                                                                                                               
INTERNAL_OUTPUT="LVDS-1"                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
# choices will be displayed in dmenu                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
choices="laptop\ndual\nexternal\nclone"                                                                                                                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
# Your choice in dmenu will determine what xrandr command to run                                                                                                                                                                                               
chosen=$(echo -e $choices | dmenu -i)                                                                                                                                                                                                                          
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               
# This is used to determine which external display you have connected
# This may vary between OS. e.g VGA1 instead of VGA-1
if [ `xrandr | grep VGA-1 | grep -c ' connected '` -eq 1 ]; then
        EXTERNAL_OUTPUT="VGA-1"
fi
if [ `xrandr | grep DVI-1 | grep -c ' connected '` -eq 1 ]; then
        EXTERNAL_OUTPUT="DVI-1"
fi
if [ `xrandr | grep HDMI-1 | grep -c ' connected '` -eq 1 ]; then
        EXTERNAL_OUTPUT="HDMI-1"
fi
if [ `xrandr | grep HDMI-2 | grep -c ' connected '` -eq 1 ]; then
        EXTERNAL_OUTPUT="HDMI-2"
fi
if [ `xrandr | grep HDMI-3 | grep -c ' connected '` -eq 1 ]; then
        EXTERNAL_OUTPUT="HDMI-3"
fi
if [ `xrandr | grep DP1 | grep -c ' connected '` -eq 1 ]; then
        EXTERNAL_OUTPUT="DP-1"
fi
if [ `xrandr | grep DP-2 | grep -c ' connected '` -eq 1 ]; then
        EXTERNAL_OUTPUT="DP-2"
fi
if [ `xrandr | grep DP-3 | grep -c ' connected '` -eq 1 ]; then
        EXTERNAL_OUTPUT="DP-3"
fi

# xrander will run and turn on the display you want, if you have an option for 3 displays, this will need some modifications
case "$chosen" in
    external) xrandr --output $INTERNAL_OUTPUT --off --output $EXTERNAL_OUTPUT --auto --primary ;;
    laptop) xrandr --output $INTERNAL_OUTPUT --auto --primary --output $EXTERNAL_OUTPUT --off ;;
    clone) xrandr --output $INTERNAL_OUTPUT --auto --output $EXTERNAL_OUTPUT --auto --same-as $INTERNAL_OUTPUT ;;
    dual) xrandr --output $INTERNAL_OUTPUT --auto --output $EXTERNAL_OUTPUT --auto --right-of $INTERNAL_OUTPUT --primary ;;

esac

Thank you for this script. I found that you made a mistake on line 42. Just replace "DP-2" to "DP-3" to fix it.

Thanks for the fix notice! Glad this helps.

Thanks for the fix notice! Glad this helps.

also I found misspelling in 'wihch' word))

Quick question, why did you write "chosen=$(echo -e $choices | dmenu -i)" instead of "chosen=$(echo $choices | dmenu -i) in line 16? The "-e" makes the laptop option not work. Just wondering.
Amazing script tho, thanks

My external screen is called DP-1, and my internal screen e-DP-1 is matched by grep DP-1. Therefore I needed to make the expression more specific: grep '^DP-1', so it matches only my external screen. I modified the other expressions for HDMI-1, VGA-1, etc. in the same way, just in case.

Thanks for the script! 🙏 It works really great.

Thanks for the script!

Thank you 🙏 Amazing script

Hey, thanks for the script man, i've been looking for it for a while now. I used it, and it works very well, but I didn't like how it looks, cause it uses dmenu, so I created another script that uses i3-nagbar which looks good to me, better than dmenu.

#!/bin/bash

INTERNAL_OUTPUT="eDP-1"

# Get all connected outputs except the internal one
mapfile -t EXTERNAL_OUTPUTS < <(xrandr | grep " connected" | awk '{print $1}' | grep -v "^$INTERNAL_OUTPUT$")

# If no external displays found
if [ ${#EXTERNAL_OUTPUTS[@]} -eq 0 ]; then
    i3-nagbar -t error -m "No external display detected"
    exit 1
fi

# Join all external outputs into a single string
EXT="${EXTERNAL_OUTPUTS[@]}"

# Build commands dynamically
LAPTOP_CMD="xrandr --output $INTERNAL_OUTPUT --auto --primary"
for out in "${EXTERNAL_OUTPUTS[@]}"; do
    LAPTOP_CMD+=" --output $out --off"
done

EXTERNAL_CMD="xrandr --output $INTERNAL_OUTPUT --off"
for out in "${EXTERNAL_OUTPUTS[@]}"; do
    EXTERNAL_CMD+=" --output $out --auto --primary"
done

CLONE_CMD="xrandr --output $INTERNAL_OUTPUT --auto"
for out in "${EXTERNAL_OUTPUTS[@]}"; do
    CLONE_CMD+=" --output $out --auto --same-as $INTERNAL_OUTPUT"
done

DUAL_CMD="xrandr --output $INTERNAL_OUTPUT --auto"
RIGHT_OF="$INTERNAL_OUTPUT"
for out in "${EXTERNAL_OUTPUTS[@]}"; do
    DUAL_CMD+=" --output $out --auto --right-of $RIGHT_OF"
    RIGHT_OF="$out"
done
DUAL_CMD+=" --primary"

# Launch i3-nagbar
i3-nagbar -t warning -m "Select display mode:" \
-b "Laptop" "$LAPTOP_CMD" \
-b "External" "$EXTERNAL_CMD" \
-b "Clone" "$CLONE_CMD" \
-b "Extend" "$DUAL_CMD"