SwitchRes is an utility built around a Control Panel and an Extension. It will allow you to control and automates the resolutions of all your monitors. It is distributed with a Control Strip Module and a Contextual Menu Item, so that it’s always available everywhere.
It is completely configurable. You can define which resolutions are really accessible, and which will require a confirmation.
You can save the position of the icons on your desktop, independently from one resolution to the other, unlike the Finder. The position of the icons is restored at startup.
You can also create ‘display sets’ which will allow you to change the resolution and the depth of all your monitors with one click.
You can assign a specific set to an application, so that every time you use this application, your Mac will automatically switch to predefined resolutions.
Configuration
SwitchRes will require a Mac with at least MacOS 8.
SwitchRes is fully compatible with MacOS 8.5 and will use all its specificities (Navigation Services, theme–switchable Appearance, PowerPC version of its Control Strip Module…)
Shareware
SwitchRes is distributed as a $9 shareware. This version is an evaluation version. You can use it for a 1-week period. After that, the preferences saving and restoring will be deactivated. To activate them again, you will have to register.
You can use the included ‘Register’ application. Don’t forget to write your address or eMail address, so that you can get the key to register.
Installation
Just drag and drop the ‘SwitchRes’ Extension and the ‘SwitchRes Control’ Control Panel on your system folder.
If you want to use the Control Strip Module or the Contextual Menu Item, drag them onto your System Folder too.
Then you have to restart your computer to use SwitchRes.
Note: You will need to delete all previous versions of SwitchRes in the Control Strip Module folder to use the new version.
User interface – the menus
Principal menu
After installation and restart, you have access to the principal menu, either in the menu bar, or in the Control Strip. This menu will look like this:
Each hierarchical menu give you the detail of each monitor:
You can choose the resolution and the depth of the all monitors.
The resolutions in italic (like 640 x 480, 120Hz) will require the traditional confirmation box. This dialog will be displayed for 5 seconds.
When the ‘ctrl’ (control) key is pressed, you can switch into a grayscale mode instead of a color mode.
Secondary menu
The secondary menu will be displayed in the Control Strip by clicking on the SwitchRes icon while holding down the ‘’ key:
This menu allows you to open the Control Panel. The Control Panel can also be opened on the Finder with a double-click on its icon.
Settings – The SwitchRes Control Panel
The Control Panel has 5 parts, each represented by a button on the upper side of the dialog.
Preferences are saved when quitting the Control Panel or closing the dialog. All settings are applied immediately.
First part: Resolutions
You can see the resolution list of every monitor. The button under the list allows you to display all resolutions your video card is capable of. Warning: your monitor may not support all these resolutions. I’m not responsible of any damage caused to your monitor. Moreover, these resolutions are not necessarily handled by your video card. In this case, no resolution change occurs.
If this button is grayed out, no other resolution is available.
From left to right, in the list, you can see:
• the resolution itself
• the vertical refresh rate of this resolution
• if this resolution is allowed or not
• if this resolution is displayed in the menu or not, or if it requires a confirmation alert box
• if this resolution owns an icon setting
Under this list, the options allow you to:
• Configure the menu: by displaying the refresh rate in the menu
(Example: “640 x 480” or “640 x 480, 120Hz”)
and by displaying a custom monitor type
(Example: “Multiscan monitor”, “21” Multiscan monitor” or whatever you want)
• Keep same color depth – You can specify to keep the same depth or to use the deepest available when switching in a new resolution.
Last, the Setup Wizard is a quick–and–easy way to configure your monitor: imagine you have to plug your PowerBook on a unknown external monitor, for a presentation. You just can select this tool and you’ll quickly have SwitchRes correctly configured for the right resolution.
You can give the wizard some clues about the physical characteritics of your monitor, these can be found in your monitor’s manual.
Second part: Preferences
The buttons shown in this part of the dialog allows you to:
• save automatically the positions of the icons of the desktop when a switch occurs. The button on the right or the last command of the menu is devoted to do this manually, which can be time saving if you don’t change your icons frequently;
• set the resolution of every monitor attached after restart, or use a specific display set (see below);
• change the delay of icon repositioning at startup. In order to wait for external hard drives to mount on the desktop, this delay is modifiable.
• use the Navigation Services in the Control Panel for choosing an Application
• activate or deactivate the SwitchRes icon at startup
Third part: Display sets
In this part, you define the settings of all your monitors that you want to handle in a set. Each set can contain up to 7 display settings. That will allow you to use a preference for non-permanently attached displays. All sets can be displayed in the principal menu.
You can add a key shortcut to each display set. For that, just click on the shortcut, and then press the key(s) that you want to use. If you want to delete a shortcut, just click with the mouse instead of pressing a key.
Fourth part: Applications
In this part, you define which applications will have their own settings.
These settings are the display set used and the sound level. They are applied when the application is launched, and can be applied again each time you put this application on the front (user definable option). When you quit the application, you can choose to restore the predefined settings. You have now the possibility to show or hide the Control Strip depending on the Application currently used.
The last application definable option is the ability to forbid every resolution change coming from the application itself. Only SwitchRes will be able to change the resolution. This is useful for games that will change your monitor to an hard–coded resolution.
Fifth part: Menus
This part is devoted to define what you want to see in the 3 SwitchRes menus: the Control Strip Menu, the Menu in the Menu bar and the Contextual Menu.
Here you can also activate or deactivate the menu in the menu bar of each application:
Try everything to choose what you like the most…!
Various
Comments
For all comments, you can email me at:
madrau@kagi.com.
Thanks to…
David Nine, Tobias Jachmann, Mike Gerenser, Michael Kummer and Norbert M. Doerner for beta testing;
Christoph Sahm for the German localisation;
Ammon Skdimore for his help in designing the BOA.
History
New in version 1.5.4
• Corrects a crashing bug when opening the Control Panel (Type–1 error)
• Corrects a bug that could crash the Control Strip when showing a dialog box from the module
• Speed and size of some parts of the code have been improved
• Saving icons and immediately opening the control panel does work correctly now
• Some problems with the Setup Wizard are now gone. Warning: some NuBus Macs don’t support the 512x384 resolution without crashing. SwitchRes cannot do anything for these machines [6200 and 6300 for example]
• Corrects a conflict with SpellCactcher™
• Corrects a conflict with some applications that used Aladdin Transaction Maker™ for changing the resolutions
• It’s impossible again to remove a Display Set if it is used by one Application. This bug has been introduiced in vrsion 1.4.1
• The list icon that displays the ascending or descending sort is now theme–dependant
• The name of the Applications shown in the list are updated automatically if it is changed in the Finder
• Added a button in the Control Panel for replacing the icons to their original positions
• Corrected a translation bug in the US version of the Setup Wizard: buttons are now localized too. Sorry…
• New: Added an option for showing or hiding the Control Strip in an Application preference: you can start a game and automatically hide the Control Strip
• New: Added a Loaction Manager Module: you can now let SwitchRes change the resolution depending on the location you defined in this Apple provided Control Panel
New in version 1.5.3
• Scrollbars are now really proportional under MacOS 8.5
• Buttons are at the right place in the first panel (finally…)
• “Apply” and “Revert” buttons are correctly shown when some preferences were modified
• Now doesn’t change the resolution any more when the settings are already correct
• Control Strip Module doesn’t say any more that “SwitchRes is not the correct version”
• Correctly changes the bitdepth if the automatic icons saving is turned on
• There are no more “0 x 0, 0 Hz” rtesolution shown on the NuBus Macintoshes
• Icons saving works again under MacOS 8.0 and 8.1
• Corrects a crashing problem that could occur sometimes when displaying some alerts
• Includes the Setup Wizard for a correct and easy configuration of your monitors. Particularily useful when you plug your Mac on a new monitor and you quickly need to know which resolutions can be handled.
New in version 1.5.2
• Corrects a really annoying bug: SwitchRes now correclty remembers the last used resolution.
• Corrects some visual problems in the Japanese version
• Corrects some crashes that could occur at startup if you were using more than one monitor. This could be seen if one of the popup menus in a Display Set contained a ‘blank’ resolution
• Corrects a bug that could crash at startup if no preference was found on startup disk
• SwitchRes now deletes all double resources in its Preferences file. That could cause a strange behavior where two or more configurations could be applied randomly at every startup.
• Corrects a bug that prevented more than one resolution to be changed in a Display Set if automatic icon saving was turned on
• Corrects memory corruption that could occur at every resolution change
• You are no more required to save Preferences in the Control Panel if all you were doing is reading the configuration. Now, Preferences are save only if they were changed.
• Reflecting this change, the title of the Control Panel’s window includes an icon in MacOS 8.5
• All applications icons are drawn in 32 bits under MacOS 8.5
• Added the ability to change the main display (the one with the menu bar in a multiple monitor configuration) from within SwitchRes’ menus and from a Display Set
• You can reduce a Display Set to only the currently attached monitors, if SwitchRes remembered all displays your Mac was plugged to
New in version 1.5.1
• Proportional scrollbars support on MacOS 8.5
• Correct drawing of the Help menu on MacOS 8.5
• Hierarchical SwitchRes submenus don’t use the monitor name twice
• Checkmarks have been added in the SwitchRes Contextual Menu to reflect the current monitor state
• SwitchRes Control saves the applications’ name even if the disk on which the application resides is not mounted
• Drag&Drop has been enhanced and corrected to support applications Drag&Drop from the ‘Find file’ application
• The position of every dialog in SwitchRes Control is saved
• The ‘SwitchRes Preferences’ file is checked at every startup. A preferences corruption won’t report you aren’t registered, but rather tell you to remove the corrupted file
• All patches are now PowerPC savvy; this to preserve the new MacOS 8.5 overall speed
• The MenuBar is correctly redrawn when a quitted application changes the resolution
• Disabling and re-enabling the SwitchRes menu in the Menu Bar doesn’t destroy the help menu any more
• Cancelling a Drag&Drop now correctly removes the application from the list
• Type 1 error when choosing an application with Navigation Services is gone
• Correctly redraws the “monitor name” Popup Menu under MacOS 8.5
• Crashes of some programs that needed to change the resolution, like games, have been eliminated
New in version 1.5
• The 3 menus are definable independently
• Applications which quit can restore the settings that were active when they were launched
• Applications may or may not apply again their settings when they are brought to front
• SwitchRes can forbid the applications to change the resolutions when they are active
• SwitchRes now shows its icon at startup
• The shareware testing period has been extended to 7 days. The annoying alert has been changed to a normal window that will allow the boot process to continue.
• Appearance of the Control Panel has radically been changed
• Lists in the Control Panel can be sorted
• The size of the Control Panel is definable. That will allow more items to be shown in the lists.
• Use of the Navigation Services is user–definable
• Position and size of the Control Panel are saved and restored during two sessions
• The name of applications that are not found (e.g. games on CDs) are conserved. Icons not found are replaced by the generic application icon (instead of a blank square).
• An Internet menu is added, which will allow you to go directly to the SwitchRes home page from within the Control Panel. This needs Internet Config to be installed.
• Position of the icons is saved when the computer shuts down
• Now supports the PowerMacs 6100/7100/8100AV and PowerBook 520, 1400 (and probably others which hasn’t been tested)
• A conflict with some applications when using hierarchical menu in the menu bar is corrected
• Display Sets’ name can now contain characters ‘(‘ and ‘-’
• A conflict with SpeedDoubler 8 shortcuts is corrected
• The current resolution is no more saved in the System ‘Display Preferences’ file. This could corrupt this file and prevent every ulterior resolution change.
• The monitor gamma is conserved after restart, even if you use a System-forbidden resolution
• SwitchRes correctly recognizes the number of colors when you add VRAM on your video board
• SwitchRes correctly recognizes the monitor when you upgrade from MacOS 8 to MacOS 8.5. On some machines (7300/7500/7600/8500/8600), one resolution was dropped in this transition (1024x768, 72 Hz), which would confuse SwitchRes and makes it think the monitor was changed.
