Changing X11 resolution on-the-fly

by Gregor Uhlenheuer on May 20, 2010

Since I always seem to forget how to change the X11 resolution without restarting X11 I will post it here. The tool to use is called Xrandr ¹. You can check if the extension is loaded with some like:

$ grep -i randr /var/log/Xorg.0.log

That should output something similar to:

(==) RandR enabled
(II) Initializing built-in extension RANDR

Once you know the Xrandr extension is loaded you can change the resolution via:

$ xrandr --size 800x600

All available resolutions can be print to console with a simple call of Xrandr without arguments:

$ xrandr

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1. X11 resize and rotation extension↩

This post is tagged with linux, x11, gentoo and console