DisplayMagician: Automate display/audio/app changes with a single desktop shortcut

Hi!

Do some of your games require that you use your triple monitors individually, yet other games require you use a single NVIDIA Surround or AMD Eyefinity screen? Do you get as frustrated as I do with having to modify your display settings when changing from one game to another?

Well I do! Or I did.

That's why I developed the free and open source DisplayMagician. I wanted to click a single desktop shortcut (or press a keyboard shortcut), and have DisplayMagician do the following for me:
  • Change my display settings to what the game needs (and change it back when done)
  • Change my audio speaker settings to what the game needs (and change it back when done)
  • Change my microphone settings to what the game needs (and change it back when done)
  • Pre-start a few applications BEFORE it starts the game (e.g. SimHub, CrewChief)
  • Wait patiently while I play my game
  • Revert everything back to the way it was automatically when I exit my game!
And that's what I built. I started with the incredible HeliosDisplayManagement software by Soroush Falahati, and then spent the next year or so developing new features and making something that would be easy to use, yet hide itself away when you didn't need it.

DOWNLOAD DISPLAY MAGICIAN NOW!
(It's free and open source code)

DisplayMagicianMainScreen.png


I've written this to scratch a programming itch I've had for a while, and to make my simracing life easier. I'm a big believer in letting software do the work for you, so I hope at least some of you find this useful!

Current features
DisplayMagician lets you set up the following information for each game or application:
  • Create and save a Display Profile to be used within future Desktop Shortcuts
  • Save a Game Shortcut that will automatically change to a different Display Profile and start your Game when you double-click on it.
  • Run your Game Shortcut using a keyboard shortcut (Hotkey).
  • Or start your games by right-clicking on the DisplayMagician Notification Tray icon.
  • Choose which Audio Device you want the shortcut to use. Like using the wireless headset when driving? This lets you with a single click.
  • Add one or more programs to pre-start before your game or application
  • Works with the following Game Launchers:
    • Steam
    • Ubisoft Uplay
    • Origin (Electronic Arts)
    • Epic Games
    • GOG.com
  • Optionally rollback to your previous Display profile once the game or application has closed.
  • Or maybe just create a Shortcut that permanently changes to a different Display Profile! The options are endless.
  • Also comes with a Shell Extension that allows you to change to a different Display Profile by right-clicking on the desktop background!
  • Supports NVIDIA Surround setups, AMD Eyefinity setups and standard Windows multi-desktop views.
  • Supports many different connection types including HDMI, DisplayPort, USB and Wireless.
  • Supports SuperDisplay and SpaceDesk android-tablet based monitors
To use:
  • Download and install ‘DisplayMagician’.
  • Run ‘DisplayMagician’, and click on the ‘Display Profiles’ button
  • Use ‘Windows Display Settings’ or ‘NVIDIA Control Panel’ to configure your display(s) exactly as you would like them (AMD EyeFinity is NOT currently supported).
  • ALT-TAB back to DisplayMagician, and you should see the new display configuration shown in the Display Profile window.
  • Click the ‘Save As/Rename’ button so that DisplayMagician will remember the current Display Profile so you can use it in your Shortcuts. You will need to do this for each different display configuration you want to use in any of your games or applications.
  • Click ‘Back’ button to go back to the Main DisplayMagician window.
  • Now that you have some Display Profiles set up, you can create some shortcuts that will use them!
  • Click on the ‘Game Shortcuts’ button.
  • You will be shown your Shortcut Library window. This is where all your Shortcuts live, and where you have to go if you every want to edit them. Click the ‘New’ button to create a new Shortcut
  • Choose the Display Profile you want to use with the Shortcut. Make sure it matches what the game expects :).
  • Click on the ‘2. Choose Audio’ tab and select any audio changes that you would like to set for this shortcut.
  • Click on the ‘3. Choose what happens before’ tab to choose as many applications as you'd like to start before the main game or application. Examples include SimHub or Crew Chief.
  • Click on the ‘4. Choose Game to start’ tab, to choose the main game or application that the Shortcut will start up and then monitor. DisplayMagician will then pause until you close the main game or application.
  • Choose the Game from the list shown, or if it’s not listed there then select the game or application executable. You can also choose to not start anything if you want to permanently change to a different display profile. NOTE: If your game isn't listed, then please launch the game at least once directly via game library (e.g. through Steam). DisplayMagician only detects games that have been run at least once.
  • Click on the ‘5. Chose what happens afterwards’ tab, and choose if you want to rollback any display changes you make while starting the game, or if you want to keep them. If the ‘auto-suggest name’ option is enabled then a Shortcut Name will be entered in automatically for you. Feel free to change the name if it's not quite right.
  • Once you're ready, click the ‘Save’ button to save the Shortcut to the Shortcut Library. If you can only see the outline of a button rather than the word Save, then the shortcut isn't valid yet. You probably have some missing fields you need to fill in. The Save button only shows if you have a valid Shortcut set up. The minimum requirement is to select a Display Profile, and select a main game or application.
  • Once you’ve saved the Shortcut, it should appear in the Shortcut Library.
  • To create a Desktop shortcut file from your Shortcut, select the Shortcut from the list in your Shortcut Library, and click the ‘Save to Desktop’ button. This will then write the Shortcut to your computer, ready to use!
DisplayMagicianShortcutOnDesktop.png

You now have 4 different ways you can start your shortcut:

  • You can double-click on the Desktop shortcut you just saved to the Desktop to start your game; or
  • You can right mouse click on the desktop background, and select the Game Shortcut from the DisplayMagician pop-up menu to start your game; or
  • You can right mouse click on the DisplayMagician notification tray icon, and select the Game Shortcut from the DisplayMagician pop-up menu to start your game; or
  • (optionally) If you've set a Hotkey for your Game Shortcut, you can press the Hotkey keyboard shortcut whenever DisplayMagician is running and your Game Shortcut will run.

The Desktop Background menu that allows you to change your display profiles with a single click is shown here:

DisplayMagicianShellExtension.png


If you find this useful, let me know. I'd love to hear what you think of it, or if there are any features I can improve or add to make your lives easier!

Thanks
Terry



More screenshots:

DisplayMagicianDisplayProfiles.png


DisplayMagicianShortcutLibrary.png








Enjoy!
 

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Quick note to let everyone know that I'm working on adding AMD Eyefinity support, as well as support for HDR. It will be a couple of months before I can get it working, but I think it's doable.

The next version of DisplayMagician will be v2.0.0, because I'm actually rewriting the Display Profile logic to record more information to track things like primary display changes and HDR settings per display, so it will require anyone who upgrades to recreate their Display Profiles from scratch, and then update their shortcuts to use those new Display Profiles.

The DisplayMagician v2.0.0 upgrade will be manual, as the change is so great I don't want to force everyone to change... I want people to make the change when they feel ready. I *may* release a new 1.x.x version just to let users with the 1.x.x series know that there is a manual update if they want it.

Anyway - that is a few months away, so I'd better get back to work. The code changes are are pretty extensive, and they won't write themselves!

Terry
 
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I forgot to mention that if you have an AMD device, or if you have HDR supported displays and adapter, then I'd like to hear from you. I'm wanting some volunteers to run some test software to test out the new video driver libraries I'm writing for DisplayMagician. To test the libraries themselves, I'm making some small test programs that will query the video cards and displays, and will also let you store and change between display profiles. It's a way of exercising the new video card libraries in a simpler way, letting me iron out the bugs before they are added into DisplayMagician.

So if you don't mind doing some testing, please DM me.
 
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@terrymacdonald Still loving the software! I've come across a potential bug though.
No matter what I do, my profile is arranging my screens out of order. I've tried deleting profiles, hotkeys, uninstalling etc. but when I click view current display it shows them as out of order. My screens are arranged in windows/Nvidia as:
6
123

However in DM they come up as:
6
213

I assume that even in uninstalling there's a residual file left somewhere that I haven't found that needs deleting?

Let me know if there's any extra info I can give you that would help.

J
 
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@terrymacdonald Still loving the software! I've come across a potential bug though.
No matter what I do, my profile is arranging my screens out of order. I've tried deleting profiles, hotkeys, uninstalling etc. but when I click view current display it shows them as out of order. My screens are arranged in windows/Nvidia as:
6
123

However in DM they come up as:
6
213

I assume that even in uninstalling there's a residual file left somewhere that I haven't found that needs deleting?

Let me know if there's any extra info I can give you that would help.

J
Hi @Jallisey,

Can you please log this as an issue at https://github.com/terrymacdonald/DisplayMagician/issues, as that will allow me to track it.

I think this is a limitation of the DM v1.1.4 video library and the way we track video changes in that version. But you're in luck! I've been working on brand new scratch built video manipulation libraries for NVIDIA, AMD and Windows CCD which grabs all the known display configuration provided by each driver, and saves it for later. The new libraries mean that it handles things like NVIDIA Surround overlaps, setting primary monitors, and things like HDR. They will be awesome when they're finished.

DisplayMagician v2.0.0 is due in another month or so, and that will be what hopefully ultimately fixes your issue.

But in the interim, please download and test NVIDIAInfo for me. NVIDIAInfo is a little test program I've written which uses my new NVIDIA display library to save display configs, and allow you to apply them from the command line. It would REALLY help me out if you could visit https://github.com/terrymacdonald/NVIDIAInfo/releases/tag/v1.0.0 and download the ZIP file, and test it out. You can find out more about how to use NVIDIAInfo here: https://github.com/terrymacdonald/NVIDIAInfo/tree/v1.0.0#readme

You will be able to run NVIDIAInfo from a command line (or a desktop shortcut) in order to set up the screens in the order that you require. If NVIDIAInfo works for you, then DisplayMagician v2.0.0 should fix this too, as I use the same NVIDIALibrary in NVIDIAInfo as I'll be using in DisplayMagician v2.0.0.

Feel free to create an issue at Github and attach a TRACE DisplayMagician.log file too.
You can create a TRACE DisplayMagician.log by opening a command prompt, and running "C:\Program Files\DisplayMagician\DisplayMagician --trace". This command will make DisplayMagician generate a DisplayMagician.log file in the C:\Users\AppData\Local\DisplayMagician\Logs folder. Please go there, open the DisplayMagician.log file and check that there are a lot of 'TRACE' log entries in the log file. If there aren't, then you'll need to try to run the command again to make DisplayMagician generate the DisplayMagician.log file.

The Shortcuts_1.0.json file will be in the C:\Users\AppData\Local\DisplayMagician\Shortcuts folder, and the DisplayProfiles_1.0.json file will be in the C:\Users\AppData\Local\DisplayMagician\Profiles folder. I'll need both of them in order to troubleshoot this.

Please attach all 3 files to the issue you create. You can simply drag the files over this issue in your web browser and it will start to be uploaded.

Hope that helps!
Terry
 
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DisplayMagician v2.0.1

IMPORTANT: You will need to create new Display Profiles, and then you will need to update your Game Shortcuts to use those new Display Profiles in order for this version of DisplayMagician to work.

This release of DisplayMagician is a new major release. It brings about three completely new, scratch-built video manipulation libraries, over 4 months in the making. These new video libraries are designed to record ALL of the display settings available within NVIDIA, AMD and Windows setups, fixing a whole slew of issues that earlier versions of DisplayMagician had.

You can download DisplayMagician v2.0.1 here: https://github.com/terrymacdonald/DisplayMagician/releases/tag/v2.0.1

DisplayMagician v2 has a lot of improvements:
  • It changes Display Profiles MUCH faster (in some cases under 5 seconds)
  • It works with AMD Eyefinity
  • It works with NVIDIA Mosaic video cards
  • It saves NVIDIA and Windows HDR settings
  • It stores screen refresh rates and bezel settings
  • It can apply a Windows background when it changes profiles
  • Many, many other tweaks and fixes.
This new functionality does come at a slight cost though… as the old Display Profiles will not work with DisplayMagician v2.0.1. The new Display Profiles record about 10x the amount of information as the old Display Profiles, and use a completely new format. This unfortunately also means that you have two task you’ll have to do before DisplayMagician v2.0.1 will work:
  1. You will need to create new Display Profiles
  2. You will need to update your Game Shortcuts to use one of the new Display Profiles**
Once you do the two tasks above, DisplayMagician will work as it always has, but now it will allow you to get your Displays exactly as you want them!

Thank you for using DisplayMagician.

DisplayMagician v2 was about 3 months solid work, and that’s why it’s taken a while to get it out the door. I really do love adding features and hearing about how the software has helped you, so feel free to post messages in this RaceDepartment Forum Thread. And if you feel like DisplayMagician v2 is worth it, I’d always appreciate a donation!

Credits

I'm so very thankful for the help of the following people, who made DisplayMagician v2 possible:
  • Scowling (Without you, AMD support wouldn’t exist)
  • Frcooper (thanks for the sponsoring)
  • Stringfieldmark (thanks for sponsoring and the testing help)
  • Bossebossebosse (thanks for the donation)
  • Sk666 (thanks for the donation)
  • FormelLMS (thanks for the donation and the testing help)
  • RBZL (thanks for the donation)
  • Domenic (thanks for the testing help)
  • Mobeeuz (thanks for the testing help)
  • Slippery-silvia (thanks for the testing help for Mosaic cards)
  • Neilperson (thanks for the cool idea)
  • DragRedSim (thanks for the bug report)
 
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Quick note to inform people that I'm working on some issues that people have found with DisplayMagician v2.0.1 around custom refresh rates and custom colour settings. If you use either of these features, then I'd recommend staying on DisplayMagician v1.1.4 until I get those bugs squashed. Some of them appear to be some tricky edge cases that I need to account for, but I still plan to have them fixed in time for the next release.
 
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Just finishing up a new release for DisplayMagician v2.1.0 now. Hoping to have it released in a week or two once it's been tested by my test users. It's a big jump in usability, as it now allows you to select the display image you want to be used for your shortcut. It also has a few improvements in loading speed when used with large games collections. And it allows you to run a command after the game too. And lastly it now supports cloned displays!

The only hold up at the moment is a slight problem with some NVIDIA cards that we're troubleshooting at the moment.

In other news, I have to thank Sean from SimCraft for buying me a large amount of coffees to thank me for my work on DisplayMagician. Thank you Sean for your kind words, and for helping me get closer to my goal of replacing my aging G27 wheel :). A massive thanks to my other sponsors too! I love working on this code knowing that it makes peoples lives just a little bit easier.

Hopefully I'll have a release for you all to enjoy in a few weeks from now.

Thanks
Terry
 
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DisplayMagician v2.1.1

WINDOWS 11: DisplayMagician v2.1.1 works with Windows 11. Just remember that you will need to recreate your Display Profiles when you move from Windows 10 to Windows 11! This is REALLY important, as Windows 11 has different display settings to Windows 10, and your old Windows 10 Display Profiles won't work. You must delete the old Display Profiles and create new ones for DisplayMagician to run properly.

This release of DisplayMagician is a new major release. It brings about three completely new, scratch-built video manipulation libraries, over 4 months in the making. These new video libraries are designed to record ALL of the display settings available within NVIDIA, AMD and Windows setups, fixing a whole slew of issues that earlier versions of DisplayMagician had.

You can download DisplayMagician v2.1.1 here: https://github.com/terrymacdonald/DisplayMagician/releases/tag/v2.1.1

DisplayMagician v2.1.1 has a lot of improvements:
  • It changes Display Profiles MUCH faster (in some cases under 5 seconds)
  • It works with Cloned displays
  • It's better at running start programs (though won't run programs needing admin rights)
  • You can choose the image your shortcut uses
  • You can run a program after closing your game
  • It works with AMD Eyefinity
  • It works with NVIDIA Mosaic video cards
  • It saves NVIDIA and Windows HDR settings
  • It stores screen refresh rates and bezel settings
  • It can apply a Windows background when it changes profiles
  • Many, many other tweaks and fixes.
This new functionality does come at a slight cost though… as the old Display Profiles will not work with DisplayMagician v2.1.1. The new Display Profiles record about 10x the amount of information as the old Display Profiles, and use a completely new format. This unfortunately also means that you have two tasks you’ll have to do before DisplayMagician v2.1.1 will work:

1. You will need to create new Display Profiles
2. You will need to update your Game Shortcuts to use one of the new Display Profiles


Once you do the two tasks listed above, DisplayMagician will work as it always has, but now it will allow you to get your Displays exactly as you want them!

Thank you for using DisplayMagician.

DisplayMagician v2.1.1 was about 5 months solid work, and that’s why it’s taken a while to get it out the door. I really do love adding features and hearing about how the software has helped you, so feel free to post messages in the RaceDepartment Forum Thread. And if you feel like DisplayMagician v2.1 is worth it, I’d always appreciate a donation!

Credits

I’m so very thankful for the help of the following people, who made DisplayMagician v2.1.1 possible:
  • Sean at SimCraft (Thank you so much for your generous donation!)
  • Domenic (Thanks for the solid month of troubleshooting help!)
  • Erbkaiser (One of the most impressive testers with an anamzing eye for detail)
  • SneakingJ (Major props for the help getting cloned display profiles to work)
  • Scowling (Again, without you, AMD support wouldn’t exist AT ALL! )
  • Slippery-silvia (Again, thanks for the testing help for Mosaic cards with v2.1)
  • Mobeeuz (Your thorough testing logs really helped!)
  • S4b0tage (Thanks for the testing help and the donation!)
  • Gpo123 (thanks for the bug report)
  • Whitestar127 (thanks for the bug report)
  • Frcooper (thanks for the sponsoring)
  • Stringfieldmark (thanks for continued sponsoring and the testing help)
  • Bossebossebosse (thanks for the donation)
  • Sk666 (thanks for the donation)
  • FormelLMS (thanks for the continued sponsoring and the testing help)
  • RBZL (thanks for the donation)
  • Neilperson (thanks for the cool idea)
  • DragRedSim (thanks for the bug report)
There have been some absolute rock stars who have helped do a lot of troubleshooting for me in order to iron out a large collection of bugs with the new video libraries, and I’m forever indebted to you. DisplayMagician is only as good as it is thanks to your help!

Terry
 
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Thank you so much for this! This latest release (2.1.1) fixed all outstanding issues for me. Absolutely brilliant! :)

For all you guys out there who are triple screen users; you should really really give this software a go. It's the essential tool for managing multi-monitors, and the best out there by a country mile.

So far I have created 3 profiles:
- Triple screen surround mode with refresh rate of 75Hz
- Desktop mode (3 separate screens) with 75Hz refresh rate for each monitor
- Center screen only with 144Hz. Also desktop mode but with the two side monitors deactivated/disconnected.
Switching between profiles is a breeze and really fast. Just create desktop shortcuts or use the icon in the notification area.
 
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Btw, could I sneak in a feature request here? :whistling:

To easily (and quickly) see which profile is active, maybe you could insert the active profile name into the tooltip of the icon in the notification area? Now it just says "DisplayMagician". What you appended the name of the active profile, for example "DisplayMagician - Surround60".

And/or even better, display the active profile name on the Windows background itself (if that's possible). With small faint text. For example in the upper left corner of the screen. Or let us customize text color and size.

Just a few suggestions. :)
 
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Thank you so much for this! This latest release (2.1.1) fixed all outstanding issues for me. Absolutely brilliant! :)

For all you guys out there who are triple screen users; you should really really give this software a go. It's the essential tool for managing multi-monitors, and the best out there by a country mile.

Awww, thanks @whitestar! It's been a lot of work getting here :)

Btw, could I sneak in a feature request here? :whistling:

To easily (and quick) see which profile is active, maybe you could insert the active profile name into the tooltip of the icon in the notification area? Now it just says "DisplayMagician". What you appended the name of the active profile, for example "DisplayMagician - Surround60".

And/or even better, display the active profile name on the Windows background itself (if that's possible). With small faint text. For example in the upper left corner of the screen. Or let us customize text color and size.

Just a few suggestions. :)
Oh I like that first idea! That's a fairly simple change. The one downside is there is a really limited character count there. I might just replace the DisplayMagician text with the profile name if it matches. Could you please log a feature request here so that you can keep tabs on how it's going: https://github.com/terrymacdonald/DisplayMagician/issues/new/choose

That active profile name on the background might be a fair bit of work. I'm not sure even if it's possible. It may be a step too far. I'll try the profile text over the system tray icon, and then we'll see if that's enough.

Thanks
Terry
 
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Are you freaking serious!! This is amazing, i just set up 5829x1080p 60Hz using surround and a single 1080p 144Hz screen in about 3 minutes and it works!!! Thank you so much for this.

The only issue i have is it moves my desktop around, as in moves MSI AB and things to different spots once i go back to surround.

Also, i think you should sell this to nvidia, they don't seem to know how to do this, they have the hot keys also but they don't do shite!!
 
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Are you freaking serious!! This is amazing, i just set up 5829x1080p 60Hz using surround and a single 1080p 144Hz screen in about 3 minutes and it works!!! Thank you so much for this.

The only issue i have is it moves my desktop around, as in moves MSI AB and things to different spots once i go back to surround.
Thanks! Its great that this is helping others out so much. Feel free to start telling people they should download and start using it :D.

If you're having issues with anything that DisplayMagician is doing then feel free to log an issue at the DisplayMagician Github outlining what's happening, and what you'd like to see happen. I will have a look at it and see if it's something I can fix, or something we just have to live with. My gut feel is there isn't really anything I can do about that as it's likely Windows or NVIDIA Surround deciding where things on the screen should go. But feel free to log an issue if you want me to investigate more indepth: https://github.com/terrymacdonald/DisplayMagician/issues/new/choose

Thanks
Terry
DisplayMagician Dev
 
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Feel free to start telling people they should download and start using it
I just did over at the Reiza forum ;)
Thanks, i am happy enough to just move the things back again, its only a little thing that i can easily live with. At least all my shortcuts dont move, its just if i have Google still open and other things like SimHub moves a cm to the right and stuff. It may help my OCD :p I will learn to just leave it.
 
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Are you freaking serious!! This is amazing, i just set up 5829x1080p 60Hz using surround and a single 1080p 144Hz screen in about 3 minutes and it works!!! Thank you so much for this.
I told you it was good! :D
Also, i think you should sell this to nvidia, they don't seem to know how to do this, they have the hot keys also but they don't do shite!!
Amen! They don't do shite because Nvidia doesn't give a shite.
 
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I told you it was good! :D

Amen! They don't do shite because Nvidia doesn't give a shite.

Oh @whitestar, I just added the notification icon text showing the profile name like you suggested. It will be in DisplayMagician v2.1.2 when it comes out (not sure on exactly when).

BTW NVIDIA and AMD were both equally hard to get help from. I had to spend time experimenting (along with some awesome help from some amazing users) to finally figure out the secret sauce to make this all work. It's been months of work, so it makes me so very happy to hear it makes everyone's lives better :).

My goal was to make my life easier. Glad to hear it's helping others too!

Thanks
Terry
 
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Thanks, this software is brilliant. It's software that "just works". It's so much more user friendly than the clunky Nvidia/Windows control panels.
Thanks Wally! I love using it because I can set up a Display Profile and then never have to touch NVIDIA Control Panel again. It was so annoying having to keep setting up the display screen order and move screens about like I did before. DisplayMagician just makes it easy.

I have to give major credit to Soroush Falahati here (the original dev of Helios Display Management which DisplayMagician used as a starter project) as he was the one who came up with the basic display profile management angle. I added the Game Shortcut idea, and wrote 3 new custom video libraries to manipulate the NVIDIA, AMD and Windows display APIs to get it to grab the full suite of display settings.

I'm so glad that it's making people's lives easier!

Thanks
Terry
 
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