Profiles

A profile is a saved snapshot of your monitor layout (which displays are enabled, their resolution, position, and orientation), captured via the Windows CCD (Connecting and Configuring Displays) API. Profiles let you flip between layouts (e.g. “Docked”, “Laptop only”, “Presentation”) in one click or a single hotkey.

Saving a profile

1. Arrange your displays the way you want them (using Windows display settings or your dock/monitor switch).
2. Open the Profiles page in WinDisplayManager, enter a name in the New profile name box, and click Save Current Layout.
3. The name becomes the filename. Characters that aren’t valid in Windows filenames (< > : " / \ | ? *) and control characters are removed, along with leading/trailing spaces and dots. If nothing usable is left (for example a name made only of dots), the profile is not saved.

If a profile with the cleaned-up name already exists, the app asks you to confirm Replace before capturing and overwriting it.

You can also choose Save Current Layout… from the tray menu, which opens the Profiles page. Delete a profile with Delete (you are asked to confirm).

Applying a profile

Click Apply next to a saved profile to apply it immediately, or pick it from Load Profile in the tray menu. To bind a profile to a global hotkey, click Hotkey next to it. This adds a matching Apply Profile hotkey on the Hotkeys page and jumps there so you can record a key combination, letting you switch layouts without opening the app.

Safe matching and limitations

Profiles identify each monitor by its Windows device path, compared without ASCII case differences. Friendly names and model/EDID numbers are not unique and are never used as a fallback. Two identical models work when their device paths are distinct. Adapter LUIDs (both halves), source/target IDs and mode associations are rebuilt for each monitor, not rewritten for every monitor on a GPU.

Connected but disabled monitors can be restored even when Windows reports no live mode for them. Windows may report several possible sources for one target: the app preserves a saved source endpoint when it still exists, otherwise uses an unambiguous active route or uniquely determined remaining route. Cloned monitors must share one source; separate desktops must not be merged. If those constraints do not determine a route, applying is refused rather than choosing the first path Windows reports.

Before any Windows validation/apply call, the app rejects missing or ambiguous identities, inconsistent clone groups, and malformed mode data. It then asks Windows to validate the remapped layout before applying it, without permitting Windows to substitute different modes. Saved resolution, position, rotation, scaling and timing data are retained. Unsupported resolutions or routing can therefore fail instead of silently producing a different layout. Hardware may still change between validation and apply; an apply error is reported without a name-based retry.

If applying fails:

• Reconnect all monitors required by the profile and retry.
• If routing is ambiguous, enable/arrange the intended displays in Windows first.
• If a port, dock, driver, or GPU change changed a monitor’s device path, arrange the layout again and recapture the profile. Profiles are not portable to other PCs merely because their monitors have the same model name.
• Virtual-mode/desktop-image layouts and profiles missing a source mode cannot currently be restored. Configure a conventional layout in Windows and recapture it. Missing target timing modes are allowed; Windows must validate the resulting layout before apply.

Older profiles and migration

Existing JSON profiles remain readable; no schema-version bump is required. New captures add optional config.path_monitors metadata, parallel to the path array, so each target retains its device identity even without a target mode. The original mode-indexed config.monitors metadata is still written.

An older profile can still be applied when its referenced target-mode metadata contains a valid, unambiguous device_path. Profiles containing only friendly names, or lacking an identity for a path without a target mode, cannot safely be migrated automatically. The error asks you to arrange the layout in Windows and recapture it using Save Current Layout (confirm Replace). Loading a profile does not rewrite it, and simply re-saving its old JSON cannot invent missing identities.

Where profiles are stored

Each profile is saved as its own JSON file at:

%APPDATA%\MonitorSwitcher\Profiles\<name>.json

This location matches the original MonitorSwitcher directory convention; that alone does not guarantee file-format or identity compatibility. Each file contains the profile name, a creation timestamp, and the captured CCD display configuration. As with hotkeys, you don’t need to edit these by hand, but they’re plain JSON if you want to inspect, back up, or share them.