Multi-monitor on Omarchy 4

Status on 4.0.4

Two or more displays work on Omarchy 4.0.4 without any configuration. Hyprland detects each output, brings it up at its preferred mode and places it automatically, and the Quickshell bar appears on every monitor. This page was checked against the v4.0.4 source tree, the 4.0.0 through 4.0.4 release notes and open issues as of 2026-09-17.

The problems are not with getting a picture. They are with making a layout stay put, and with monitors that go dark after an idle cycle and never come back. The displays and multi-monitor component carries 1132 issues in the tracking data, and the 4.x ones cluster tightly on those two themes.

On 3.x you edited ~/.config/hypr/monitors.conf with monitor= lines. Since 4.0.0 that file is monitors.lua and the rules are hl.monitor({ ... }) calls. Old guides that tell you to paste monitor=eDP-1, preferred, auto, 2 do not apply. See monitors.conf replaced by monitors.lua.

What Omarchy does automatically

The shipped ~/.config/hypr/monitors.lua contains one catch-all rule, hl.monitor({ output = "", mode = "preferred", position = "auto", scale = omarchy_monitor_scale }), with omarchy_monitor_scale set to "auto" and GDK_SCALE set to 2. Everything else is machinery around it:

• Clamshell. switch:off:Lid Switch runs omarchy-hyprland-monitor-clamshell, which disables the internal panel when the lid shuts and an external output is active, and re-enables it at the remembered scale when you open it. This replaced the hand-written bindl lid switches people were copying from issue #427 for nearly a year.
• A monitor watcher. omarchy-hyprland-monitor-watch subscribes to Hyprland’s event socket, reconciles clamshell state on monitoradded and monitorremoved, and polls every two seconds while a laptop is docked as a backstop for drift across suspend.
• Modeless recovery. A display that was switched off at boot hands the kernel a truncated EDID with no video modes, so Hyprland enables it at 0x0 and it stays black. Switching it on later produces no hotplug event, so 4.0.0 added omarchy-hyprland-monitor-modeless plus a reload loop in the watcher that backs off from 3 to 60 seconds and recovers the output without a reboot.
• Toggle recovery. A systemd user service runs omarchy-hw-recover-internal-monitor before the graphical session and clears a stale internal-disable toggle if no external display is connected, so you cannot boot undocked into a disabled laptop screen.
• Mirroring and toggles. Super + Ctrl + Delete toggles the laptop display, Super + Ctrl + Alt + Delete mirrors it to the first external output. Both refuse unsafe connector names, and the toggle refuses to disable your only active display.
• Scaling. Super + / and Super + Alt + / step through 1, 1.25, 1.6, 2, 3 and 4, rounded up to a scale Hyprland accepts in 1/120 steps. omarchy display text size moves shell, GTK and terminal text together without touching monitor scale.
• External brightness. Brightness keys drive the focused display. External monitors that speak DDC/CI are adjusted through ddcutil, Apple Studio and XDR displays through asdcontrol, and laptop panels through the kernel backlight picked by omarchy-hw-display.
• Panel quirks. fix-asus-ptl-b9406-display.sh adds xe.enable_panel_replay=0 on the ASUS ExpertBook B9406, where Panel Replay holds the last frame in self-refresh and nothing short of a full modeset, such as a VT switch, repaints it. fix-nouveau-cursor.sh forces software cursors on nouveau, where the hardware cursor plane is invisible. xps13-text-scaling.sh drops text size to 11 on the 2026 XPS 13.

Known problems

Issue	Models	Status	Fixed in
#6909 internal panel scale snaps to 2x on every idle wake	Laptops on stock scale = "auto" with an external monitor	Fixed by #7581	4.0.1
#7084 clamshell watcher ignores desc: keyed, multi-line and require()d rules and re-asserts the catch-all scale over them	Any docked laptop whose internal panel rule is not a one-line connector-name rule in monitors.lua	Open
#8103 scale changes not persisted when monitors.lua has explicit per-output rules	Dell Latitude 7420 and any laptop plus external	Open
#6673 Display panel scale is per-monitor live but persists globally, rescaling the others	Three-display AMD Ryzen AI 9 setup, any mixed-DPI array	Open
#7326 internal monitor position forced back to auto	Dell Latitude E5470, any laptop plus external	Open
#12147 monitor stays dark after wake because dpmsStatus desyncs to true	Hybrid Intel plus NVIDIA, LG HDR 4K on DP	Open
#12152 external-only output unusable after idle wake, atomic commits fail with EINVAL	Dell Vostro 5470, i915 plus nouveau	Open, Aquamarine fix upstream
#12180 lock surface not backed by a valid wayland output, black screen then hard freeze	Intel UHD 630	Open
#12208 lockscreen failsafe loop during HDMI thrash	AMD Phoenix1 with Dell U2719DX on HDMI	Open
#12207 USB4 monitor EDID read fails on about half of hotplugs, stuck at 640x480	Dell XPS 16 DA16260, Panther Lake with xe	Open
#12083 4K at 120 Hz blanks for seconds on every frame after a pause	AMD Navi 33 on HDMI 2.1	Open
#9804 Quickshell SIGSEGV when a monitor is set to bitdepth = 10	NVIDIA RTX 4060 laptop with OLED external	Open, traced to a null image in Mesa’s Wayland EGL path; reporter later ran 10-bit without crashes with XWayland off
#12192 and #12198 update icon appears on one bar only	Any multi-monitor machine	Open
#2184 Chromium crashes when moved between monitors	All, 3.x era	Fixed by #2394, then upstream in Chromium	3.1.0

Fixes that work

Work down this list in order.

1. Put your layout in monitors.lua, keyed by connector name. Open it with Setup > Monitors in the Omarchy menu. Use hl.monitor({ output = "eDP-1", mode = "preferred", position = "auto", scale = 2 }) and a matching line per output. Connector names come from hyprctl monitors. Keep each rule on one line and do not use desc: for the internal panel on a laptop: the clamshell watcher cannot read those rules, and as soon as the catch-all holds a number (which happens the first time you press Super + /) it re-asserts that number over yours (#7084).
2. If a scale will not stick, stop using the panel and the hotkeys. Edit the value in monitors.lua and reload. Both #8103 and #6673 come from the same gap: the live change and the file disagree, and the docked poller re-asserts the file. Editing the file removes the mismatch.
3. A display that is dark after wake needs to be cycled off and on, not just on. Run hyprctl dispatch 'hl.dsp.dpms({ action = "disable" })' then the same with "enable". omarchy-system-wake skips the enable dispatch when every monitor already reports dpmsStatus true, which is exactly the stuck state (#12147).
4. If that does nothing, switch VT and back. Ctrl + Alt + F2 then Ctrl + Alt + F1 forces a full modeset and brought the HDMI output back for the reporter of #12152. The reporter of #12208 used a second TTY the way Hyprland’s failsafe screen describes, to clear the crashed lock client. Treat both as workarounds, not fixes.
5. A monitor stuck at 640x480 with an empty description got a bad EDID read. Check cat /sys/class/drm/card*-DP-1/edid | wc -c. If it is 0, re-probe a few seconds after plugging in: echo off | sudo tee /sys/class/drm/card0-DP-1/status, then echo detect to the same file. On the XPS 16 in #12207 the full EDID came back on every retry, and the modeless recovery above does not catch this case because the output does have a mode, just the wrong one.
6. If display trouble started with 4.0.4, suspect the kernel. 4.0.4 shipped linux-omarchy to everyone. Boot the stock linux entry once from the Limine menu and compare. Two AMD reporters in #12083 and the XPS 14 reporter in #12188 confirmed the stock kernel clears their problem.
7. Chromium crashing on a monitor move is a 3.x bug that Chromium fixed upstream. PR #2394 added --disable-features=WaylandWpColorManagerV1 to the default flag files in 3.1.0 as a stopgap; the 4.0.4 chromium-flags.conf no longer carries it. If a current Chromium still crashes when you move a window, add that line to ~/.config/chromium-flags.conf yourself.

Report it

Collect a bundle with omarchy-debug. It writes /tmp/omarchy-debug.log with inxi -Farz, dmesg, this boot’s warnings and errors, and the package list. Use omarchy-debug --no-sudo to skip dmesg, and --print to print instead of upload. Three reporters on 4.0.4, in #12147, #12180 and #12207, found that omarchy debug through the CLI wrapper was not available on their install even though the source tree lists it, so run the hyphenated command directly.

For a display bug, add these by hand, since the debug log does not carry them:

• hyprctl monitors all -j, which shows disabled outputs, mirrors, scale and dpmsStatus.
• The connector state: cat /sys/class/drm/card*-*/status and the size of the matching edid file.
• Your ~/.config/hypr/monitors.lua.
• The Hyprland log lines around the failure. atomic drm request: failed to commit: Invalid argument is the line both #12147 and #12152 turn on.
• Whether the same thing happens on the stock linux kernel.

Say which connector, which monitor make and model, and whether the machine was docked. If you have a machine that works well, add it at hardware submit.

Related

• Multi-monitor layout not saved
• monitors.conf replaced by monitors.lua
• Fractional scaling blurry or huge apps
• Hybrid GPU laptops and suspend and sleep
• Thunderbolt docks
• Lock screen will not unlock and black screen after login
• Omarchy manual chapter on monitors