Monitor

• Detect monitor resolutions and set the desktop wallpaper, for any window manager (please file an issue if your window manager is not supported yet).
• Supports GNOME timed wallpapers, and includes a utility that can run an event loop for changing them (also supports cross fading).
• Introduces a new file format for timed wallpapers: The Simple Timed Wallpaper format: FORMAT SPEC.

Highlighted functions

• The monitor.Detect function can return a []Monitor slice in Go, with information about all connected monitors.
• The monitor.SetTimedWallpaper function can be used for launching an event loop that handles GNOME timed wallpapers.

Included utilities

• getdpi, for retrieving the average DPI, for all monitors.
• lscollections, for listing installed wallpaper collections.
• timedinfo, for showing more information about installed GNOME timed wallpapers.
• lsmon lists the connected monitors and resolutions.
• lstimed for listing installed GNOME timed wallpapers.
• lswallpaper, for listing all installed wallpapers.
• setcollection, for setting a suitable (in terms of resolution) wallpaper from a wallpaper collection.
• setrandom, for setting a random wallpaper.
• settimed, for setting GNOME timed wallpapers (will continue to run, to handle time events).
• setwallpaper can be used for setting a wallpaper (works both for X11 and Wayland).
• wayinfo shows detailed information about the connected monitors, via Wayland.
• xinfo shows detailed information about the connected monitors, via X11.
• xml2stw for converting GNOME timed wallpapers to the Simple Timed Wallpaper format.

Example use of the lsmon utility

$ lsmon
0: 1920x1200
1: 1920x1200
2: 1920x1200

Building and installing utilities

Using make, for building and installing all included utilities:

make
make install

Using Go 1.11 or later, for a single utility:

go get -u github.com/xyproto/monitor/cmd/setwallpaper

On Ubuntu, from a fresh installation:

sudo apt get update
sudo apt get install libxcursor-dev libxmu-dev libx11-dev git golang-go
go get -u github.com/xyproto/monitor/cmd/setwallpaper
cd ~/go/src/github.com/xyproto/monitor

Manually:

# clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/xyproto/monitor

# build and install the setwallpaper command
cd monitor/cmd/setwallpaper
go build
install -Dm755 setwallpaper /usr/bin/setwallpaper

Example use of setwallpaper

setwallpaper /path/to/background/image.png

Example use of the Go package

Retrieve monitor resolution(s)

package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"os"

	"github.com/xyproto/monitor"
)

func main() {
	// Retrieve a slice of Monitor structs, or exit with an error
	monitors, err := monitor.Detect()
	if err != nil {
		fmt.Fprintf(os.Stderr, "%s\n", err)
		os.Exit(1)
	}
	// For every monitor, output the ID, width and height
	for _, monitor := range monitors {
		fmt.Printf("%d: %dx%d\n", monitor.ID, monitor.Width, monitor.Height)
	}
}

Change the wallpaper

fmt.Println("Setting background image to: " + imageFilename)
if err := monitor.SetWallpaper(imageFilename); err != nil {
	return err
}

Build requirements

• Go 1.11 or later.
• A working C compiler (tested with GCC 8.2.1)
• libwayland-client.so and header files available, for Wayland support.
• libX11.so and header files available, for X11 support.

General info

• Author: Alexander F. Rødseth <[email protected]>
• License: MIT
• Version: 3.2.0