Xfce Forum

Pheeble

Member

Registered: 2015-06-22

Posts: 32

Automatic screen mirroring doesn't work

Linux Mint 21.3 XFCE on Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5.

The 'Settings->Display->Advanced' tab contains a section 'Connecting Displays' with a drop-down box for 'When new displays are connected'. I have set the option to 'Mirror', but when I connect an HDMI TV it does not automatically mirror the laptop's display to the TV. Instead the TV display shows the laptop desktop in the top left overlaid on a larger but otherwise identical desktop.

I can manually set the TV to mirroring the laptop display by changing the 'Mirror displays' button in the 'General' tab from '-' to a checkmark and clicking Apply. Unfortunately I have to do this every time I connect the TV via the HDMI port. It seems that the 'When new displays are connected -> Mirror' does not automatically mirror the laptop display to the TV when it is connected, so what is the point of that 'Mirror' setting?

I can get it to work automatically only by creating a profile for that specific TV and enabling 'Automatically enable profiles when new display is connected.' That works ok if the same HDMI device is always used, but the laptop is regularly used by a non-geek relative to connect to new HDMI displays at different locations. I need the display mirroring to happen automatically as soon as a new HDMI display is connected. Is that not the intent of 'When new displays are connected -> Mirror'? The meaning of that setting seems obvious to me, but perhaps I have misunderstood it. Or is this a bug in the Display settings?

Is there some way to get the display settings to automatically mirror to a new display even if it has never connected to that display before and there is no display profile saved?

This is the output of inxi:

System:
  Kernel: 5.15.0-187-generic x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: Xfce 4.18.1
    Distro: Linux Mint 21.3 Virginia
Machine:
  Type: Convertible System: LENOVO product: 82HS v: IdeaPad Flex 5 14ITL05
    serial: <filter>
  Mobo: LENOVO model: LNVNB161216 v: SDK0J40709 WIN serial: <filter>
    UEFI: LENOVO v: FXCN31WW date: 07/30/2021
Battery:
  ID-1: BAT0 charge: 28.7 Wh (60.5%) condition: 47.4/52.6 Wh (90.0%)
    volts: 11.9 min: 11.5
CPU:
  Info: quad core model: 11th Gen Intel Core i7-1165G7 bits: 64 type: MT MCP
    cache: L2: 5 MiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 666 min/max: 400/4700 cores: 1: 979 2: 552 3: 812
    4: 555 5: 561 6: 579 7: 855 8: 439
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel TigerLake-LP GT2 [Iris Xe Graphics] driver: i915 v: kernel
  Device-2: Syntek Integrated Camera type: USB driver: uvcvideo
  Display: server: X.Org v: 1.21.1.4 driver: X: loaded: modesetting
    unloaded: fbdev,vesa gpu: i915 resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz
  OpenGL: renderer: Mesa Intel Xe Graphics (TGL GT2)
    v: 4.6 Mesa 23.2.1-1ubuntu3.1~22.04.4
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel Tiger Lake-LP Smart Sound Audio
    driver: sof-audio-pci-intel-tgl
  Sound Server-1: ALSA v: k5.15.0-187-generic running: yes
  Sound Server-2: PulseAudio v: 15.99.1 running: yes
  Sound Server-3: PipeWire v: 0.3.48 running: yes
Network:
  Device-1: Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX201 driver: iwlwifi
  IF: wlp0s20f3 state: up mac: <filter>
Bluetooth:
  Device-1: Intel Bluetooth 9460/9560 Jefferson Peak (JfP) type: USB
    driver: btusb
  Report: hciconfig ID: hci0 state: up address: <filter> bt-v: 3.0
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 484.39 GiB used: 85.83 GiB (17.7%)
  ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: Micron model: MTFDHBA512QFD size: 476.94 GiB
  ID-2: /dev/sda type: USB vendor: Verbatim model: STORE N GO
    size: 7.45 GiB
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 97.87 GiB used: 85.79 GiB (87.7%) fs: ext4
    dev: /dev/nvme0n1p5
  ID-2: /boot/efi size: 256 MiB used: 34.7 MiB (13.6%) fs: vfat
    dev: /dev/nvme0n1p1
Swap:
  ID-1: swap-1 type: file size: 2 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) file: /swapfile
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 27.0 C mobo: 25.0 C
  Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A
Info:
  Processes: 264 Uptime: 3m Memory: 15.17 GiB used: 1.21 GiB (8.0%)
  Shell: Sudo inxi: 3.3.13