get-edid(1)

✨ NAME ✨

okay so bestie, welcome to get-edid and parse-edid — they're the read-edid tools, and together they retrieve and interpret your monitor's specs using the VESA VBE DDC protocol 💖 (yes, that's a mouthful, we'll get there)

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

get-edid [OPTIONS] | parse-edid
get-edid [OPTIONS] > filename
parse-edid < filename

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so the read-edid utility is literally two tools, and their names are get-edid and parse-edid 💅

get-edid uses real mode calls to do Data Display Channel (DDC) transfers, or it uses Linux i2c calls to do Enhanced DDC transfers, to retrieve information from monitors. and what info, you ask? identification strings, supported sync ranges, available video modes, and video mode parameters 👑 that stuff can be useful for configuring X Window System servers in certain cases, no cap.

get-edid returns the raw Extended Display Identification Data (EDID) block straight from the monitor, which is why the parse-edid command exists — it interprets that raw block and generates a human-readable block of text information that can also be included in a X11 xorg.conf file ✨

generally, the output of get-edid is piped directly to parse-edid. it's giving iconic duo.

new in version 3.0.0: get-edid takes a few options 👀

• -b BUS, --bus BUS — only scan the i2c bus BUS (if built with i2c support)
• -c, --classiconly — only use the older VBE interface (if built with i2c and VBE support)
• -h, --help — display a basic help message
• -i, --i2conly — only use the newer i2c interface (if built with i2c and VBE support)
• -m NUM, --monitor NUM — try to return information about monitor number NUM (VBE only)
• -q, --quiet — do not output messages over stderr

parse-edid still does not take any options. --help will show you which options your build of read-edid supports 🫶

💖 AUTHOR 💖

read-edid is originally the work of John Fremlin and others. since 1.4.2, the new maintainer and programmer has been Matthew Kern. nearly all of the code for this project, as well as this manual page, has been rewritten for 3.0.0 by Matthew Kern. see AUTHORS for more details 🌈

🌟 SEE ALSO 🌟

Matthew Kern's read-edid website at <http://polypux.org/projects/read-edid> — go check it out, iykyk 💜

and that's the whole page bestie 🎀 this one's from 2013-08-29, and it lives in the get-edid(1) section of the General Commands Manual. slay, now go read your monitor's whole life story 💅✨