ansaurus

Question

Getting screen resolutions & position/offsets from OSX

Answer 1

A:

I don't know about in Python, but since you said you're interested in any solutions, you can do this in Java with GraphicsEnvironment.getLocalGraphicsEnvironment().getScreenDevices(). This will return an array of screens, which you can loop through and get various properties of. For example, you could print the width and height of the first screen by doing something like the following:

System.out.println(GraphicsEnvironment.getLocalGraphicsEnvironment().getScreenDevices()[0].getDisplayMode().getWidth() + "x" + GraphicsEnvironment.getLocalGraphicsEnvironment().getScreenDevices()[0].getDisplayMode().getHeight());

The obvious advantage of doing this within the constructs of whatever language you choose instead of by parsing a system file is that it should be portable, but that might not matter to you since you specifically requested OS X.

EDIT: I just read that .getScreenDevices() provides no guarantee that the array will be populated in any particular order (in regards to screen position), so this may not fully suit your needs.

Segphault 2010-10-12 15:06:34

Interesting, will this give me the offset of the screens too? As in tell me where the screen appear relative to each other? That's the main bit I'm having trouble getting hold of. As in, can I tell if the 2nd monitor is aligned to the bottom-right of the first etc etc with pixel precision?

Jaffa The Cake 2010-10-12 15:59:19

No, see my edit -- for that info, I suspect you will have to parse a system file of some sort after all. Unfortunately, I don't know where to look.

Segphault 2010-10-12 16:33:42

Answer 2

+1 A:

The official API for this is NSScreen. In Objective-C, you use

NSArray*screens=[NSScreen screens];
for(NSScreen*screen in screens){
     NSRect frame=[screen frame];
     // frame.origin.{x,y} and frame.size.{height,width} contains the info you want
}

The 0-th entry of the array [NSScreen screens] is guaranteed to be the main screen, i.e. with the main menu bar.

Using Cocoa methods from Python should be easy, although I don't know :p From the command line,

$ python
>>> from AppKit import *
>>> NSScreen.screens()[0].frame()

gave the screen dimensions... although I don't fully understand how the bridging works. Read the official doc!

Yuji 2010-10-12 18:36:58

Thanks muchly, exactly what I'm looking for. Seems I was confusing myself trying to do this via applescript with appscript.

Jaffa The Cake 2010-10-13 08:09:51

ansaurus

tags:

views:

answers:

Getting screen resolutions & position/offsets from OSX

related questions