Workaround for DisplayLink and automatic re-association

[vividfog]

Quitting DisplayLink Manager.app effectively disconnects the DisplayLink'ed monitors from the OS. Starting the app again reconnects the monitors. But BD auto-association doesn't seem to recognize them correctly. They are treated as new monitors.

DisplayLink generates new IDs for them every time. Do you want to consider adding other methods to recognize newly connected monitors, if they in reality are the same monitors? Perhaps by using labels or other metadata, and some additional logic to deal with duplicate labels?

[waydabber]

I can detect if a display is virtual (it's in the code already) and in this case I won't be using the CGDirectDisplayID for association, only the display name. I'll pop up a notification though explaining to the user that this is a virtual display and if he is using multiple displays with the same name, the app won't be able to tell them apart.

[vividfog]

That sounds like a useful improvement.

[waydabber]

Hi, can you try this new build? Just want to see if this works better. Please try it after reboot as well. I now use the serial number instead of port number for virtual displays. It seems to work well with sidecar, but I don't know how DisplayLink works in this regard. If this does not work, then I'll revert to not using any IDs.

(btw. I don't use serial numbers for real displays as most often a batch of displays have the same id and that causes issues on multi monitor setups).

[vividfog]

Hi, can you try this new build?

Can't seem to find a new build. Where is it?

[waydabber]

Hahh, yeah, I forgot to add that, here it is:

(link removed)

[vividfog]

Long story short: it worked. The expectation and behavior now match:

1. Quit DisplayLink Manager.app
2. Left & Right Wing displays are now disconnected
3. Launch DisplayLink Manager.app
4. Left & Right Wing displays are now connected and auto-associated correctly

I'll let you know if it breaks. But based on the initial test, consider this issue closed. 👍

[waydabber]

Great, thank you! I'll close it once 1.0.11 is released, I'll add a Done label to the issue until that time.