How do I switch which display is primary?

Question

Ever since I connected my HDTV to my Ubuntu system, Ubuntu has wanted to use it as the primary display.

I thought I had this fixed up through 11.04, but I do not remember how, and now with 11.10 the login box is showing up on the HDTV again.

This is a problem for me because normally the HDTV is (a) set to a different input source and (b) turned off. Now I have to turn it on and change the input source every time I want to log in or launch an application.

How can I configure 11.10 to use the correct monitor as the primary?

Thank you.

Try turning off the secondary display(HDTV) in "Monitors" application, and turning it back again. — Nemo, Oct 22 '11 at 17:00

score 3 · Answer 1 · edited Aug 23 '12 at 18:07

3

First list all displays with:

xrandr --prop

Display names will look like DVI-1, HDMI-0, VGA-1 and so on. Find the display you want to make primary and run the following command:

xrandr --output DVI-1 --primary

Where DVI-1 is the display you chose.

edited Aug 23 '12 at 18:07

Eliah Kagan

117,780

answered Aug 23 '12 at 09:09

Artur Bodera

131

con-f-use · Answer 2 · 2012-03-18T09:21:37.543

1

Usually you switch the default display in Ubuntu's own display manager. It goes like this:

Dash display settings

However, depending on your GPU driver you might need to use another application than the display manager instead. Since I have an nVidia Graphics card for instance, the display manager won't work for me. I have to use the NVIDIA X Server Settings manager, shown in the picture below:

Nvida Display Manager

edited Mar 18 '12 at 09:21

answered Oct 23 '11 at 10:04

con-f-use

18,813

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:24

0

If you have an ATI graphic card, I suggest you to manage primary screen by modifying ~/.config/monitors.xml

enter image description here

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:24

Community

1

answered Mar 18 '12 at 09:39

Boris

4,932

How do I switch which display is primary?

3 Answers3