Changing the primary monitor

Ask Fedora
1

Hello, all.

I’m having some trouble setting my primary monitor… sort of. Basically, I want to set my “real” primary monitor as the main one. The reason why I want to change it is because I get the dialogs etc. on the other monitor and it’s driving me nuts. The setup used to be fine but I took apart my PC to do some maintenance, after which, everything’s #/(&"=%! up :frowning_face:
I’ve tried deleting .config/monitors.xml and .config/monitors.xml~, rebooting and logging back in, but that didn’t help. I also tried manually modifying .config/monitors.xml by adding <primary>no</primary>, but that didn’t help, either.

Here’s the XML:

<monitors version="2">
  <configuration>
    <logicalmonitor>
      <x>346</x>
      <y>0</y>
      <scale>1</scale>
      <primary>no</primary>
      <monitor>
        <monitorspec>
          <connector>DP-2</connector>
          <vendor>PHL</vendor>
          <product>PHL 242G5</product>
          <serial>0x00000b7e</serial>
        </monitorspec>
        <mode>
          <width>1920</width>
          <height>1080</height>
          <rate>144.00076293945312</rate>
        </mode>
      </monitor>
    </logicalmonitor>
    <logicalmonitor>
      <x>0</x>
      <y>1080</y>
      <scale>1</scale>
      <primary>yes</primary>
      <monitor>
        <monitorspec>
          <connector>DP-1</connector>
          <vendor>AOC</vendor>
          <product>AG273QS3R4</product>
          <serial>0x000000ff</serial>
        </monitorspec>
        <mode>
          <width>2560</width>
          <height>1440</height>
          <rate>143.91154479980469</rate>
        </mode>
      </monitor>
    </logicalmonitor>
  </configuration>
</monitors>

And here’s a screenshot of the settings (I want 1 to become 2 and vice-versa).

Thanks :slight_smile:

2

You could try to click the drop down menu on the next right of Primary Display and select which one you want to set as primary and click Apply on very top right window.

42caaffb2d58ba83a9a24430c4707c1b570f8243.png
42caaffb2d58ba83a9a24430c4707c1b570f8243.png984×688 51.5 KB

If this still failed, disconnect the secondary monitor, move monitor.xml file to elsewhere, logout and login again. Connect secondary monitor and try again with above drop down menu and click Apply on very top right window.

1 Like
3

Thanks, Syaifur, it worked a charm! What I did wrong all along was that I reconnected the monitors before restarting. Again, thanks a lot :smile:

1 Like