DisplayMagician is an open source tool for automatically configuring your displays and sound for a game or application from a single Windows Shortcut. DisplayMagician is designed to change your display profile, change audio devices, start extra programs and then run the game or application you want. It will even reset things back to the way they were for you once you’ve closed the game or application!

Download

The latest version of this application is available for download via the release page.

IMPORTANT! - If you tried DisplayMagician in the past and it didn’t work for you, please try it again. There has been a complete rewrite of the NVIDIA, AMD and Windows video manipulation libraries, and it is able to track and manipulate nearly all possible display configuration settings!

What it does

Different games require your displays configured in different ways. If you’re a simracer like me, you also require a lot of additional ‘helper’ applications the give you the additional functionality to game the way you want. Making all those changes each time I wanted to play each game REALLY started annoying me, and I thought there must be a better way.

There is now. DisplayMagician allows you to configure multiple different display profiles, and then use those different display profiles to create Game Shortcuts. These Game Shortcuts allow you to have your game or application start exactly the way you like it.

Do you like running Dirt Rally 2.0 on a single NVIDIA Surround window across triple screens, and yet you like to run Assetto Corsa across four individual screens (a triple and one above)? Do you like running SimHub when you play iRacing, yet you want to start Twitch when you play Call of Duty? Well with DisplayMagician you can do all that with a single Desktop Shortcut (you can even start games with a Hotkey)!

DisplayMagician also allows you to automatically change to a different audio device just for one game, and will revert that change when you close the game. Great if you have some special audio devices you use only for certain games. No more fiddling with audio settings - just play the game!

Please read through the README for features (current and planned) and issues you may encounter while using the program.

Feel free to report missing features or bugs using the project issue tracker.

Current features

DisplayMagician lets you set up the following information for each game or application:

Planned features

Requirements

Donation

I am doing this work to scratch a programming itch I’ve had for a while. It’s pretty fun to take something carefully crafted by another developer and extend it with a lot of other awesome features. That said, I’d appreciate a donation to help buy a coffee or two! If you’re so inclined, you can sponsor me on GitHub Sponsors.

Usage

Screenshots

Initial Setup:

If you prefer to see a video on how to setup DisplayMagician, check out this awesome ‘How to Setup DisplayMagician’ video from JDM PC Gaming. Otherwise, perform the steps shown below:

  1. Install ‘DisplayMagician’
  2. Run ‘DisplayMagician’, and click on the ‘Display Profiles’ button
    • Use ‘Windows Display Settings’, ‘NVIDIA Control Panel’ or ‘AMD Radeon Setup’ to configure your display(s) exactly as you would like them
    • 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 Game 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.
  3. Now that you have some Display Profiles set up, you can create some Game Shortcuts that will use them! Click on the ‘Game Shortcuts’ button.
  4. You will be shown your Shortcut Library window. This is where all your Shortcuts live, and where you have to go if you ever want to edit them.
  5. Click the ‘New’ button to create a new Game Shortcut
    • Choose the Display Profile you want to use with the Game Shortcut. Make sure it matches what the game expects :).
    • Click on the ‘2. Choose Audio’ tab, to modify which speakers you use for sound, or which microphone you use to talk into.
    • Click on the ‘3. Choose what happens before’ tab, to choose any other programs you want to start before you start the main Game or Application. You can choose if you want to shut them down afterwards too! Click on the ‘Find Examples’ button if you’d like to see some example helper software and their settings for popular games.
    • Click on the ‘4. Choose Game to start’ tab, to choose the main game or application that the Game Shortcut will start and monitor.
    • Choose the Game from the list shown (be sure to click it so it has a red border), or if it’s not shown in ths list then select the specific game or application executable in the ‘Launch a Game executable’ section of the page.
    • Click on the ‘5. Chose what happens afterwards’ tab, and choose if you want to rollback any changes made by the Game Shortcut when it runs, or if you want to keep them rather than rolling them back.
    • If the ‘auto-suggest name’ option is enabled then you should have a Shortcut Name already entered in automatically.
    • You can optionally create a keyboard shortcut (Hotkey) for this Game Shortcut. To do this, click on the ‘Hotkey’ button.
    • Click the ‘Save’ button to save the Shortcut to the Shortcut Library. If you can only see the outline of a button, then you have some missing fields you need to fill in. The Save button only shows if you have a valid Shortcut set up.
  6. Once you’ve saved the Short cut, you should see it in the Shortcut Library.
  7. To create a Desktop shortcut file from your Shortcut, select it in 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!

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

Have fun!

License

Copyright © Terry MacDonald 2020-2022

Original HelioDisplayManagement - copyright © Soroush Falahati 2017-2020

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.

Credits

Thanks for the work and the time that all of our contributors put into making this a better project. Following is a short list, containing the names of these amazing people:

Thanks for the work and the time that all of our contributors put into making this a better project. Following is a short list, containing the names of these amazing people: