Change Screen Resolution with One Keyboard Shortcut
Do you find that you need to frequently change your screen resoltion? I do several times a day and some reasons are when: doing demos, showing my laptop screen to serveral people at once, switching between monitors, recording/capturing the screen, connecting to projectors, etc. It is a bit of a pain to go to the display properties each time or use the free little system tray icon utility provided by ATI.
So here's my solution. I can now very quickly switch between modes (800x600, 1024x768, 1600x1200, etc) with one keyboard shortcut per resolution at anytime. Here's how...
- Download WinKey
A small freeware app that lets you assign apps and folders to Windows-Key combinations. See my blog post on WinKey for more info. Add it to your Startup menu. - Download QRes
A small (4k) freeware command line app to change screen resolution. - Set WinKey to run QRes
Here are my assignments. Make sure your screen supports the resolution setting first.
If you put QRes under "C:\Program Files\QRes\QRes.exe", you can use this Windows Registry file to import these settings below into WinKey.
-- Win-Ctrl-8 to run "QRes.exe /x:800 /y:600" for 800x600 (presenting on small TV)
-- Win-Ctrl-1 to run "QRes.exe /x:1024 /y:768" for 1024x768 (presenting on large TV)
-- Win-Ctrl-2 to run "QRes.exe /x:1280 /y:1024" for 1280x1024 (presenting on projector)
-- Win-Ctrl-4 to run "QRes.exe /x:1400 /y:1050" for 1400x1050 (laptop's LCD's native)
-- Win-Ctrl-6 to run "QRes.exe /x:1600 /y:1200" for 1600x1200 (laptop when docked)
Update on 2/22/07 -- Self Installation Now Avalible!
I've packaged this all up into a nice & easy little self installer. It does the steps above for you.
Install: SetupChangeResolutionHotkey.zip
Vista Users: You must run Setup.exe (not the .msi file) in the zip and reboot to start the app.