How can I reset my display settings through terminal?

Question

I am using Ubuntu 15.10. I accidentally changed the size of the interface to maximum. Now my folders and windows are too large and don't fully fit the screen so I cannot revert the effect. Is there any way to reset the display settings to default so this can revert to normal?

Solution 1

Removing ~/.config/monitors.xml should do it:

• Open a terminal window by pressing Ctrl+Alt+T
• type rm ~/.config/monitors.xml and press Enter
• immediately log out and back in. It should be reverted now

Alternatively

If you know what resolution your screen supports (e.g. 1440x900), you can run the command:

xrandr -s 1440x900

to at least temporarily set a workable solution, then subsequently change settings from GUI.

Solution 2

I had a similar problem to you but I found the solution here How to scale title bars and menu in Ubuntu 14.04 with the terminal only

dconf reset /com/ubuntu/user-interface/scale-factor

This changes the "scale for menu and title bars" to default.

Solution 3

Just to add to this, since this is the first thread that appeared for me: My solution to reset the display was to use:

xrandr --listactivemonitors

Comments

[alexanast]

it did not work.

[alexanast]

uhd. It was the highest in the settings and it is already set at that resoloution. i think 3840x2160

[Jacob Vlijm]

Hi @alexanast just (re) tested it. Did you forget to log out/in? it works really. Local monitor settings are stored in ~/.config/monitors.xml. There is no way these settings are remembered if you remove the file and immediately log out, unless you must have done something exotic.

[alexanast]

login screen fixed but desktop enviroment didnt. Restarting to check. edit It did not.

[Jacob Vlijm]

@alexanast curious to what you did to change the settings?

[alexanast]

well i guess i will mark this as correct since it should work. I fixed it through settings by going in blind using tab so no problem. Thanks for the soloution and you patience

[Slaughterfish]

This worked for ubuntu 16.04 atleast

[Pablo Bianchi]

Also you can use dconf-editor, go to that path, Set to default.

[bakoyaro]

also works if you know the resolution you want, edit the monitors.xml file and set the resolution to your desired value

[gerlos]

A quick and effective way to restart the GUI (both Xorg and Wayland) in case of problems like this is to use the Ctrl-Alt-Backspace shortcut. You could remove monitors.xml and restart GUI right away using this shortcut. Unfortunately is disabled by default. You need to run sudo dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration and answer yes when prompted to enable this shortcut.

[alphabetasoup]

But this doesn't reset anything?

[tommy61157]

I'm using Lubuntu 18.04 and ~/.config/monitors.xml does not exist on my machine, what could be some possible alternate locations for this file?

[Kosta]

I had to restart the computer in order to have it work, but basically removing the monitors.xml did the trick.

[Anshu]

it 's really good answer..thank

[Jules Colle]

if you ended up in the recovery mode with root access the file will not be under ~, but under /home/yourusername instead

[Eurospoofer]

If you unplug an external monitor and display doesn't reset, running this will reset the monitor config.

[Henrique Bruno]

I was having some bizarre dual monitor behaviors and this removal fixed it, many thanks!

[Admin]

you rescue me ! this works for ubuntu 20.04