ControlsFromTerminal

This set of bash scripts allows one to control different interfaces through terminal.

There are 3 main scripts in this repository, backlight to control your laptop backlight, volume to control and limit your volume through pulseaudio (requires pactl), and alacrittyResizeFont an ultra short script to resize the font with a single command. Also there are 2 legacy scripts for X11, brightness to control your brightness easily through xrandr, monset for setting up your monitors and keeping the settings with xrandr. These legacy scripts will not be updated anymore. All of the files are coded in bash script, you need awk, grep, wc, and bc installed, almost all Linux systems have them installed as default.

INSTALLING

1. Copy the cftconfig folder under ~/.config/.
2. Create a symbolic link to somewhere in your path.

BACKLIGHT

The files, backlight and .config/cftconf/backlight/backlight.conf are files needed to control your backlight.

WARNING! To use the script make sure you know the path that controls your backlight.

Before using

1. Change the mode of the brightness file to 666. (requires sudo privileges)

Example:

chmod 666 /sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/brightness

Important: The mode of the file above will turn back to normal, you can add the following line to crontab as root (sudo crontab -e).

@reboot chmod 666 /sys/class/backlight/intel_backlight/brightness

2. Change the path to the brightness file that has the value of backlight level in backlight.conf.

Usage

backlight [OPTION]

• This script takes only one option, second will be discarded
• To increase backlight brightness: backlight u
• To decrease backlight brightness: backlight d
• To directly adjust backlight brightness: backlight <NUM> (1-100 or 1-LEVELS according to your configuration)"
• To turn backlight off: backlight off
• To display help: backlight -h | --help

Notes to i3wm users having problems with hotkeys

After copying the files into /usr/local/bin

Add the contents to your config file:

bindsym XF86MonBrightnessUp exec backlight u # increase screen brightness
bindsym XF86MonBrightnessDown exec backlight d # decrease screen brightness

BRIGHTNESS

The file brightness can be used to control the brightness of the screen. It changes --brightness setting of xrandr.

Before using

Copy the file, brightness wherever you want with backlightconfig and run.

Usage

• To increase brightness: bright -u
• To decrease brightness: bright -d
• To set brightness to default value: bright -m
• To directly adjust backlight brightness: bright -n <NUM> (0-2 in decimals, eg. 0.8)
• To show connected displays: bright -s
• To set display to be adjusted: bright -D <displayname>
• To display help bright -h or bright --help

Default display is primary display! You don't need to use -D flag if you want to change the brightness settings of primary display.

The script is tested with Dell 9560, Ubuntu 18.04 and i3wm.

VOLUME

This script detects and controls the sound on the active sink instead of "Master" or a given sink. It also allows switching between sinks. It is tested and works for multiple USB outputs. Changing output within sink which allows switching between HDMI outputs, headphones, and computer speakers, is still missing.

The files needed are volume and ./config/cftconfig/volume/volume.conf

Unimportant note: The reason to code this was that I've had experiences where I had problems controlling the sound using the scripts and programs available.

Usage

Correct usage: volume [OPTIONS]

• If you want to change the sink use '-s ' before 'u' or 'd'
• To increase volume: volume u
• To decrease volume: volume d
• To directly adjust volume: volume (1-100 or 1-LEVELS according to your configuration)
• To mute: volume mute
• To select sink: volume -s (Default: @DEFAULT_SINK@)
• To switch output: volume switchsinks
• To display help: volume -h or --help

MONSET

This script is still under development, so it might still have bugs. Please read carefully before using.

It uses xrandr and is designed to use multiple monitor setups interchangably.

The files needed are:

• Script file: monset
• Monitor list: .config/cftconf/monset/MONITORS
• Monitor configs: .config/cftconf/monset/MONITORCONFIG

IMPORTANT: Make sure that all monitors and monitor settings have distinct names, it causes problems. (Example: Don't name office monitor office and office setting office too, change one or the other.)

Adding unsaved monitors to monitor list

At the moment, the monitors that are being used should be saved manually into the MONITORS file.

1. Use xrandr --prop | grep -w "connected" | awk '{print $1}' to detect which outputs are connected to monitors. The output should give you the outputs with connected monitors. Such as HDMI-1
2. Use the names of those in the following command to get first line of EDID. xrandr --prop | grep HDMI-1 -A 30 | grep EDID -A 8 | tail -8 | head -1 | grep -o "[A-Za-z0-9]*" (Change HDMI-1 with the connected monitor you get) This should give you something like 00ffffffffffff006258df1213131932
3. Add the monitor to your MONITORS file with the name of the monitor. echo "PC-mon 00ffffffffffff006258df1213131932 >> ~/.config/MONITORS
4. Repeat this process for all monitors you have. Make sure that all monitors have separate names.

Setup file

I will add more details but for the time look at sample config files.