Getting Started with Presets

Presets are the fastest way to switch your displays between your favourite setups — brightness, contrast, input source, resolution, power state, and more — all with one click.

What They Do

With Presets, you can save all the settings across monitors, including:

• Brightness
• Contrast
• Volume
• Input Source (like HDMI, DisplayPort, etc)
• Resolution
• Rotation (0, 90, 180 and 270 degrees)
• Power (turn off or on)

You can even enable settings that affect multiple monitors using Presets, like:

• Sync - this lets all monitors follow the settings of a single monitor - for example: maintaining the same brightness across different monitors.

Uses

• Work Mode: Both monitors on your Mac input, brightness at 70% for long hours.
• Movie Time: One monitor dimmed, the other switched to your Apple TV.
• Game Time: Your main monitor switches input source to your PS 5
• Focus Mode: Secondary display powered off, main screen at full brightness.

Create a Preset

1. Open DisplayBuddy and set the brightness, contrast and volume of your displays how you like them.
2. Click the “+” icon in the Presets section on the top of DisplayBuddy
3. Customise any other settings you want to Preset to apply to your monitors. Some settings are special:
   1. Included in Preset: If this toggle is disabled, no changes will be made to that display when the preset is activated.
   2. Power OFF: If this toggle is enabled, other settings like rotation, resolution and input source cannot be selected since the display will be powered off when the preset is activated.
4. Give it a name and click “Save Preset” at the bottom of the window. That’s it.

Activate a Preset

In the App

Just open DisplayBuddy and click your preset — it applies instantly. All your saved settings across multiple displays will be applied.

Keyboard Shortcut

Set custom shortcuts for each Preset in Settings → Preferences → Keyboard Shortcuts to switch modes without opening the app.

Schedules

Automate your day: switch to Work Mode at 9 AM and Movie Time at 7 PM. Or at sunrise. Or when you connected that specific monitor. Set it up under Settings → Schedules.

Learn more about Schedules can help you automate your presets here.

Widgets

On macOS Sonoma and above, add your presets as desktop widgets — trigger them with a single click.

Control Center

On macOS Tahoe and above, access your presets right from the menu bar Control Center for quick switching.

Spotlight

Hit ⌘ + Space, type the preset name, and activate it directly from Spotlight.

Edit a Preset

You can tweak a preset anytime from  Settings → Preferences → Presets → Edit — you can edit the settings saved within each display.

Note: If the preset includes settings for a currently disconnected displays, the settings for that display cannot be edited. You can edit them again when the display is connected.

Preset Order

You can also edit the order in which Presets are displayed in DisplayBuddy by dragging their order in Settings → Preferences → Presets.

The default order follows when the preset was created.

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We’re really excited to see how you use Presets — whether it’s automating your workspace, dimming for movie nights, or powering off displays when you’re away.