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How can I get the current display resolution from the command line in OS X?

Community
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cwd
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6 Answers6

82
system_profiler SPDisplaysDataType | grep Resolution
Gerry
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19

For a quick reading on the current virtual resolution of a single retina display:

$ osascript -e 'tell application "Finder" to get bounds of window of desktop'
0, 0, 2048, 1280

Results for multi-monitor setups vary based on which display is primary and how they are arranged. Read more here

rymo
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4

I use the utility screenresolution to get the screen resolution:

$ /usr/local/bin/screenresolution get 2>&1 | grep -oE 'Display 0: [0-9]+' | grep -Eo '[0-9]+$'  
1920
Giacomo1968
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Mark Stewart
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3

This is a little one-liner I came up to return the the resolution of the main display, that doesn't require any dependencies to be installed on macOS:

system_profiler -json SPDisplaysDataType 2>/dev/null | python -c "import sys,json;d=next(i for i in json.load(sys.stdin)['SPDisplaysDataType'][0]['spdisplays_ndrvs'] if 'spdisplays_main' in i);print d['_spdisplays_pixels']"

If you need to filter based on different criteria, just replace the 'spdisplays_main' in i expression with a more suitable one.

I know someone on the internet will take offence at the fact that this does in fact depend on Python... Python has come bundled with macOS since Jaguar, so even if you're running a Power Macintosh G3 that hasn't been updated in the last 15 years, you won't need to download Python.

Andrew Odri
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1

I wrote displayplacer, which can help with this. Execute displayplacer list and it will show the current resolution (and more info) for all screens.

$ displayplacer list
Persistent screen id: A46D2F5E-487B-CC69-C588-ECFD519016E5
Contextual screen id: 1124216237
Type: 40 inch external screen
Resolution: 3840x2160
Hertz: 60
Color Depth: 4
Scaling:off
Origin: (0,0) - main display
Rotation: 0
Resolutions for rotation 0:
  mode 0: res:3840x2160 hz:60 color_depth:4 <-- current mode
  mode 1: res:3840x2160 hz:60 color_depth:8
  mode 2: res:3840x2160 hz:30 color_depth:4
...
Persistent screen id: 2960D639-F605-5BB4-A53D-A3263008894C
Contextual screen id: 69733451
Type: MacBook built in screen
Resolution: 1680x1050
Hertz: N/A
Color Depth: 4
Scaling:on
Origin: (-1680,1291)
Rotation: 0 - rotate internal screen example (may crash computer, but will be rotated after rebooting): `displayplacer "id:2960D639-F605-5BB4-A53D-A3263008894C degree:90"`
Resolutions for rotation 0:
  mode 0: res:1440x900 color_depth:4 scaling:on
  mode 1: res:1440x900 color_depth:8 scaling:on
  mode 2: res:720x450 color_depth:4 scaling:on

grep is a simple approach to parse the output.

$ displayplacer list | grep -e Resolution: -e Scaling:
Resolution: 3840x2160
Scaling:off
Resolution: 1680x1050
Scaling:on

Also available via Homebrew brew tap jakehilborn/jakehilborn && brew install displayplacer

Jake Hilborn
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0

Here's one more quick way that assigns the X and Y values to an array.

$ resolution=(`system_profiler -json SPDisplaysDataType | grep '"_spdisplays_resolution"' | grep -oE '[0-9]+'`)
$ echo $resolution
1920 1080
kees
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