I got tired of rearranging my monitors every time I plug them in

Akshin Yolcuyev — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 18:35:58 +0000

I have two external monitors connected to my Mac. Every time I unplug one — for a meeting, to move my laptop to the couch, or just after waking from sleep — macOS "forgets" the arrangement. Monitors swap sides. The primary display changes. Resolution resets.

Every single time: System Settings > Displays > drag the rectangles > pick the resolution > set the primary monitor. Thirty seconds that feel like thirty minutes.

I looked it up — this has been a known problem for years. There are paid solutions, but it felt absurd to pay for something macOS should handle on its own: remembering where my monitors go.

So I built MonitorManager. A menu bar utility written in Swift that does exactly one thing: remembers your monitor arrangement and restores it automatically.

Set up your monitors > hit Save > give it a name > done. Next time you plug in, everything snaps back into place: positions, resolution, primary display. You can save multiple profiles — "Work", "Gaming", "Presentation" — and switch with one click.

No Electron. No subscriptions. A native 100KB app that sits in your menu bar and just works.

Open source. For now you can build from source:

git clone https://github.com/akshin18/monitor_man.git
cd monitor_man && chmod +x build.sh && ./build.sh
open MonitorManager.app

Homebrew tap is coming soon.

GitHub: github.com/akshin18/monitor_man

DEV Community: Akshin Yolcuyev

I got tired of rearranging my monitors every time I plug them in