This utility watches for USB device connect/disconnect events and switches monitor inputs via DDC/CI. This turns a simple USB switch into a full-fledged KVM solution: press one button on your USB switch and all your monitors connect to a different input.

It is supposed to be installed on all computers that could be connected to these monitors, since the app only switches monitors "one way" and relies on itself running on the other computers to switch it "the other way" as needed.

The app should function on MacOS, Windows, and Linux.

• Linux and Windows: download and extract the files from the releases page and place them where you see fit.
• MacOS: display_switch can be installed with Homebrew:

  brew install haimgel/tools/display_switch

The configuration is pretty similar on all platforms:

On MacOS: the configuration file is expected in ~/Library/Preferences/display-switch.ini On Windows: the configuration file is expected in %APPDATA%\display-switch\display-switch.ini On Linux: the configuration file is expected in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/display-switch/display-switch.ini or ~/.config/display-switch/display-switch.ini

Configuration file settings:

  usb_device = "1050:0407"
  on_usb_connect = "Hdmi1"
  on_usb_disconnect = "Hdmi2"

usb_device is which USB device to watch (vendor id / device id in hex), and on_usb_connect is which monitor input to switch to, when this device is connected. Supported values are Hdmi1, Hdmi2, DisplayPort1, DisplayPort2, Dvi1, Dvi2, Vga1. If your monitor has an USB-C port, it's usually reported as DisplayPort2. Input can also be specified as a "raw" decimal or hexadecimal value: on_usb_connect = 0x10

The optional on_usb_disconnect settings allows to switch in the other direction when the USB device is disconnected. Note that the preferred way is to have this app installed on both computers. Switching "away" is problematic: if the other computer has put the monitors to sleep, they will switch immediately back to the original input.

display-switch supports per-monitor configuration: add one or more monitor-specific configuration sections to set monitor-specific inputs. For example:

on_usb_connect = "DisplayPort2"
on_usb_disconnect = "Hdmi1"

[monitor1]
monitor_id = "len"
on_usb_connect = "DisplayPort1"

[monitor2]
monitor_id = "dell"
on_usb_connect = "hdmi2"

monitor_id specifies a case-insensitive substring to match against the monitor ID. For example, 'len' would match LEN P27u-10 S/N 1144206897 monitor ID. If more than one section has a match, a first one will be used. on_usb_connect and on_usb_disconnect, if defined, take precedence over global defaults.

Tips for Windows: monitors can be renamed in the Registry at \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\DISPLAY\{MODEL_ID}\{CONNECTION_ID}. Edit the DeviceDesc value and change the name after the last semicolon. This is especially helpful in case they are all just "Generic PnP Monitor".

display-switch supports running external commands upon connection or disconnection of USB devices. This configuration can be global (runs every time a configured USB device is connected or disconnected) or per-monitor (runs only when a given monitor is being switched):

usb_device = "1050:0407"
on_usb_connect = "Hdmi1"
on_usb_disconnect = "DisplayPort2"
on_usb_connect_execute = "echo connected"
on_usb_disconnect_execute = "echo disconnected"

[monitor1]
monitor_id="foobar"
on_usb_connect_execute = "echo usb connected, monitor 'foobar' being switched"
on_usb_disconnect_execute = "'c:\\program files\\my app.exe' --parameter"

Notes:

1. External applications are executed as the same user that started display-switch.
2. This program supports splitting supplied configuration into application name and parameters, but no other shell features are supported.
3. If the application path contains spaces, surround the full file path with single quotes.
4. On Windows, escape the backslashes (replace \ with \, see the example above).

This fork pins ddc-macos to a revision that detects mirrored displays. Build the binary and CoreGraphics layout helper from this checkout; the Homebrew release uses the older enumerator:

cargo build --release --locked
mkdir -p "$HOME/.local/bin"
install -m 755 target/release/display_switch "$HOME/.local/bin/display_switch"
swiftc -O macos/display-layout.swift -o "$HOME/.local/bin/display-layout"
"$HOME/.local/bin/display-layout" status

status prints each online display's decimal vendor:model:serial ID. Copy the IDs into your ~/Library/Preferences/display-switch.ini file, along with your USB device and monitor inputs:

usb_device = "VID:PID"
on_usb_connect_execute = "/absolute/path/display-layout desk MAIN_ID OTHER_ID"
on_usb_disconnect_execute = "/absolute/path/display-layout away DELAY_SECONDS MAIN_ID OTHER_ID"

[monitor1]
monitor_id = "MONITOR_NAME"
on_usb_connect = "Hdmi1"

[monitor2]
monitor_id = "OTHER_MONITOR_NAME"
on_usb_connect = "DisplayPort1"

away waits the configured number of seconds, makes the built-in display main, then mirrors the listed online displays to it. desk stops mirroring the listed displays and makes the first one main. It waits up to two seconds for all listed displays to become active. Add more IDs to either command as needed. The Mac runs desk before DDC input switching; it runs away on USB departure. Global commands run even when DDC finds no displays.

To locate the ID of your USB device ID on Windows:

1. Open Device Manager
2. Locate the USB device, view the properties
3. Switch to the Details tab and select Hardware IDs in the Property dropdown
4. You should see a value similar to HID\VID_046D&PID_C52B&MI_00 (the exact values will differ) - the USB device ID is a combination of the Vendor ID and the Product ID - for example, in this case it would be 046D:C52B

To locate the ID of your USB device ID on MacOS, open a terminal and run the following:

brew install lsusb

$ lsusb > a
<switch the usb dock here>
$ lsusb > b
$ opendiff a b

In the command output, the highlighted lines show you which USB IDs are most relevant.

For a full list of USB devices:

system_profiler SPUSBDataType

Important: The format for your display-switch.ini is VendorID:ProductID. VendorID is displyed second in the system_profiler output

Requires additional packages, install via: sudo apt install libxi-dev xorg-dev

To locate the ID of your USB device on Linux, first install lsusb, which your Linux distro should have a package for. (On Debian, Ubuntu and RedHat, the package name is usbutils.) Then, in a terminal, run the following:

$ lsusb > a
<switch the usb dock here>
$ lsusb > b
$ diff -u a b

The diff output will show which USB IDs are most relevant.

• On MacOS: the log file is written to /Users/USERNAME/Library/Logs/display-switch/display-switch.log
• On Windows: the log file is written to %LOCALAPPDATA%\display-switch\display-switch.log
• On Linux: The log file is written to $XDG_DATA_HOME/display-switch/display-switch.log or ~/.local/share/display-switch/display-switch.log

Install Rust, then do cargo build --release

Install Xcode, install Rust, then do cargo build --release

Install Rust, then do cargo build --release

Copy display_switch.exe from target\release (where it was built in the previous step) to %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup.

  # Get your INI file in order! (see above)
  cp target/release/display_switch /usr/local/bin/
  cp dev.haim.display-switch.daemon.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents/
  launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/dev.haim.display-switch.daemon.plist

Copy built executable:

  cp target/release/display_switch /usr/local/bin/

Enable read/write access to i2c devices for users in i2c group. Run as root :

groupadd i2c
echo 'KERNEL=="i2c-[0-9]*", GROUP="i2c"' >> /etc/udev/rules.d/10-local_i2c_group.rules
udevadm control --reload-rules && udevadm trigger

Then add your user to the i2c group :

sudo usermod -aG i2c $(whoami)

Create a systemd unit file in your user directory (/home/$USER/.config/systemd/user/display-switch.service) with contents

[Unit]
Description=Display switch via USB switch

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/display_switch
Type=simple
StandardOutput=journal
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

Create the config file at /home/$USER/.config/display-switch/display-switch.ini. Then enable the service with

systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user enable display-switch.service
systemctl --user start display-switch.service