gvidm(1)

💅 NAME 💅

okay so gvidm — it's a GTK+ app that lets you change your video resolutions in X, like, fast and easy. no drama, no fuss. periodt.

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

gvidm [-r] [modes...]
gvidm [-r] <-l|-q> [screens...]

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

bestie. listen. gvidm is a gtk app that changes your video resolutions in X, and it's genuinely so easy. you run it, and it pops up a list of all the modes you've got available. you pick one (or you cancel, no pressure), and then it just… exits. done. that's the whole vibe.

and that's literally why it's perfect for running from an application menu or a hotkey 💖 — because it dips the second you're done with it, so you're not burning RAM on some applet that just sits there running forever. main character energy: shows up, does the thing, leaves. we love that for us.

if you're running dual or multi-head displays? it'll hand you a list of screens so you can pick the right one. no guessing, no cap.

you can also skip the popup entirely and tell it which mode to switch to immediately, or give it a whole list of modes to choose from. modes go in this form:

[screen:]<resolution>

if you don't specify the screen part, it just uses the current screen. the keyword cur will use the current screen, and all can be used to make the mode apply to all screens 🌈. as for the resolution, you can write it as <width>x<height>[@refresh], or use the keyword max, best, or all.

here's the tea on best 🍓: if the same resolution is available at multiple refresh rates, best will show you only the one with the highest rate. so specifying all:all? that's literally the same as running gvidm with no args at all. iconic.

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🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

• -l, --list — prints a list of available modes, on all screens or just the screens you specify.
• -q, --query — prints a list of the current modes, on all screens or just the screens you specify.
• -r, --resize — changes the root window size.
• --help — prints help info. that's it, that's the option 💅

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🔥 EXAMPLES 🔥

choose a resolution out of all possible:

gvidm

choose a resolution out of 1024x768, 800x600, 640x480:

gvidm 1024x768 800x600 640x480

switch to 640x480 immediately:

gvidm 640x480

switch screen 1 to 800x600 and screen 2 to 1024x768:

gvidm 1:800x600 2:1024x768

switch all screens to their highest resolution:

gvidm all:max

choose from only screen 1's modes:

gvidm 1:all

print current mode of all screens:

gvidm -q

print current mode of screen 2 and screen 3:

gvidm -q 2 3

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🙈 NOTES 🙈

okay important stuff, don't skip this part:

gvidm cannot change the color depth, because doing that would require restarting X. so no, it can't do that. sorry bestie 😭

also, any and all modes you want to appear must be defined in your XF86Config. if you've only configured one mode, that's all that's gonna show up in the pop up. (though apparently that seems to no longer be the case with XFree 4.3+ 👀)

the XVidMode and/or XRandR extensions must be enabled in order to run gvid.

and like I mentioned up top, gvidm supports multiple screen displays, Xinerama included. so if you're running Xinerama, make sure the configure script actually detects that and compiles in support for it. if gvidm only shows you one list of resolutions while you're running Xinerama, that means Xinerama just wasn't detected. that's the whole reason, no mystery 🧚

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

Matthew Mueller <donut AT dakotacom.net>

the latest version, plus other programs he's written, are available from: http://www.dakotacom.net/~donut/programs/gvidm.html

based on gvid by Keith Vanderlinde <kvand@mit.edu> http://kvand.mit.edu/gvid/

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and that's the whole page, bestie 🫶 this one's from 23 Jun 2004, and it's the gvidm(1) manual page (General Commands Manual, if you're keeping track). go change some resolutions, you got this 💜