xrantui

Interactive terminal UI for arranging monitors, built with ncurses and Xrandr.

Features

• Visual scaled-down canvas showing all active monitors
• Move monitors with arrow keys — snaps to edges automatically
• Cycle through each monitor's supported resolutions
• Set primary monitor
• Apply layout instantly via xrandr
• Save layout for persistence across reboots (XDG autostart, .xprofile, .xinitrc)
• Undo to revert to positions at startup

Requirements

Runtime

• X11 with Xrandr
• xrandr in $PATH

Build dependencies

sudo apt install gcc make pkg-config libncurses-dev libxrandr-dev libx11-dev

Installation

git clone <repo>
cd xrantui
make
sudo make install        # installs to /usr/local/bin

Custom prefix:

sudo make install PREFIX=/usr     # → /usr/bin/xrantui
make install PREFIX=~/.local      # → ~/.local/bin/xrantui (no sudo)

Uninstall:

sudo make uninstall

Usage

Run inside a terminal within an X session:

xrantui

If DISPLAY is not set:

DISPLAY=:0 xrantui

Keybindings

Key	Action
Tab	Select next monitor
← ↑ → ↓	Move selected monitor (40 px/step, snaps to edges)
+ / -	Cycle selected monitor's resolution (larger / smaller)
p	Set selected monitor as primary
u	Undo — revert all monitors to positions at startup
Enter	Apply layout with xrandr
s	Save layout
q	Quit

Persistent layout

Press s to save the current layout. xrantui writes to all relevant startup files automatically, covering most X setups:

File	Used by
~/.screenlayout/xrantui.sh	The xrandr script itself
~/.config/autostart/xrantui.desktop	XDG autostart — GNOME, KDE, XFCE, LXDE
~/.xprofile	Display manager without DE — e.g. LightDM + sxwm
~/.xinitrc	startx + bare WM — e.g. sxwm. Inserted before exec.

~/.xprofile and ~/.xinitrc are only modified if they already exist.

Project structure

├── main.c       — event loop and keybindings
├── monitors.c   — read/write monitor state via Xrandr
├── monitors.h
├── draw.c       — render monitors with ncurses
└── draw.h