How do I get monitor resolution in Python?

Question

In Windows, you can also use ctypes with GetSystemMetrics():

import ctypes
user32 = ctypes.windll.user32
screensize = user32.GetSystemMetrics(0), user32.GetSystemMetrics(1)

so that you don't need to install the pywin32 package; it doesn't need anything that doesn't come with Python itself.

For multi-monitor setups, you can retrieve the combined width and height of the virtual monitor:

import ctypes
user32 = ctypes.windll.user32
screensize = user32.GetSystemMetrics(78), user32.GetSystemMetrics(79)

I created a PyPI module for this reason:

pip install screeninfo

The code:

from screeninfo import get_monitors
for m in get_monitors():
    print(str(m))

Result:

monitor(1920x1080+1920+0)
monitor(1920x1080+0+0)

It supports multi monitor environments. Its goal is to be cross platform; for now it supports Cygwin and X11 but pull requests are totally welcome.

On Windows:

from win32api import GetSystemMetrics

print("Width =", GetSystemMetrics(0))
print("Height =", GetSystemMetrics(1))

If you are working with high resolution screen, make sure your python interpreter is HIGHDPIAWARE.

Based on this post.

Taken directly from an answer to the post How can I get the screen size in Tkinter?,

import tkinter as tk

root = tk.Tk()

screen_width = root.winfo_screenwidth()
screen_height = root.winfo_screenheight()

If you're using wxWindows, you can simply do:

import wx

app = wx.App(False) # the wx.App object must be created first.    
print(wx.GetDisplaySize())  # returns a tuple

On Windows 8.1 I am not getting the correct resolution from either ctypes or tk. Other people are having this same problem for ctypes: getsystemmetrics returns wrong screen size

To get the correct full resolution of a high DPI monitor on Windows 8.1, one must call SetProcessDPIAware and use the following code:

import ctypes
user32 = ctypes.windll.user32
user32.SetProcessDPIAware()
[w, h] = [user32.GetSystemMetrics(0), user32.GetSystemMetrics(1)]

Full Details Below:

I found out that this is because windows is reporting a scaled resolution. It appears that python is by default a 'system dpi aware' application. Types of DPI aware applications are listed here: High DPI Desktop Application Development on Windows

Basically, rather than displaying content the full monitor resolution, which would make fonts tiny, the content is scaled up until the fonts are big enough.

On my monitor I get:
Physical resolution: 2560 x 1440 (220 DPI)
Reported python resolution: 1555 x 875 (158 DPI)

Per this Windows site: Adjusting Scale for Higher DPI Screens. The formula for reported system effective resolution is:

(reported_px*current_dpi)/(96 dpi) = physical_px

I'm able to get the correct full screen resolution, and current DPI with the below code. Note that I call SetProcessDPIAware() to allow the program to see the real resolution.

import tkinter as tk
root = tk.Tk()

width_px = root.winfo_screenwidth()
height_px = root.winfo_screenheight()
width_mm = root.winfo_screenmmwidth()
height_mm = root.winfo_screenmmheight()
# 2.54 cm = in
width_in = width_mm / 25.4
height_in = height_mm / 25.4
width_dpi = width_px/width_in
height_dpi = height_px/height_in

print('Width: %i px, Height: %i px' % (width_px, height_px))
print('Width: %i mm, Height: %i mm' % (width_mm, height_mm))
print('Width: %f in, Height: %f in' % (width_in, height_in))
print('Width: %f dpi, Height: %f dpi' % (width_dpi, height_dpi))

import ctypes
user32 = ctypes.windll.user32
user32.SetProcessDPIAware()
[w, h] = [user32.GetSystemMetrics(0), user32.GetSystemMetrics(1)]
print('Size is %f %f' % (w, h))

curr_dpi = w*96/width_px
print('Current DPI is %f' % (curr_dpi))

Which returned:

Width: 1555 px, Height: 875 px
Width: 411 mm, Height: 232 mm
Width: 16.181102 in, Height: 9.133858 in
Width: 96.099757 dpi, Height: 95.797414 dpi
Size is 2560.000000 1440.000000
Current DPI is 158.045016

I am running Windows 8.1 with a 220 DPI capable monitor. My display scaling sets my current DPI to 158.

I'll use the 158 to make sure my Matplotlib plots are the right size with:

from pylab import rcParams
rcParams['figure.dpi'] = curr_dpi