Displays

Arrange displays and configure persistent scale, brightness, and text size.

Open Monarch Menu → Actions → Hardware → Displays to use Monarch's display panel.

The panel can:

• adjust brightness for each supported display;
• change text size across Noctalia, GTK applications, and the terminal;
• set the scale of the focused display;
• enable or disable connected displays;
• open a visual arrangement tool for display placement.

The last active display cannot be disabled. Brightness control for an external monitor depends on that monitor supporting DDC/CI.

Useful shortcuts

Action	Shortcut
Cycle scale on the focused display	SUPER + CTRL + D
Cycle scale backwards	SUPER + CTRL + SHIFT + D
Toggle the laptop display	SUPER + CTRL + Delete
Toggle laptop-display mirroring	SUPER + CTRL + ALT + Delete

The same actions are available under Monarch Menu → Actions → Hardware.

Command line

List the output names Niri sees:

monarch display list

Use those names with the display commands:

monarch display scale eDP-1 1.5
monarch display toggle HDMI-A-1 off
monarch display brightness --list
monarch display brightness eDP-1 60
monarch display text size 115

Reset the global text size to Monarch's default:

monarch display text size reset

Text size accepts 75–175 percent in five-percent steps. It changes Noctalia panels and bar, GTK text scaling, and the default terminal font together.

Scale and enabled-state changes are persisted in the generated ~/.config/niri/runtime.kdl, so they survive configuration reloads and reboots. Do not edit that file directly; use the panel or the commands above.