Xsettingsd not work as a login script

[gigi314]

A few months ago, I encounter Intellij IDEs (e.g., IDEA, PyCharm) not scale well in 4K screen, and the accepted solution solved my problem:

@linux-aarhus

Create a script ~/.local/bin and add

#!/bin/sh
xsettingsd &

You can add it using the Startup and Shutdown → Add Login Script

But after the upgrade, this method fails to work, and I have to run xsettingsd manually after booted.

I want to know the difference between running xsettingsd as a login script and running it manually after booted?

I also noted that even if I terminal xsettingsd by Ctrl-C, the scaling effects still work. What does xsettingsd do on earth? Why does scaling still work after xsettingsd is terminated?

[Aragorn]

@gigi314

But after the upgrade, this method fails to work, and I have to run xsettingsd manually after booted.

That’s not the right place to put it. You must add xsettingsd — the executable, not the script — to your ~/.xsession file. See the man page…

man xsettingsd

I suppose you could also add it to ~/.xinitrc, though.

[gigi314]

What should I add into ~/.xinitrc? I tried to append

xsettingsd

to it. But it does not work either.

[gigi314]

I found a workaround way, but don’t know why.

I noticed that scaling does not work if xsettingsd is a daemon. On the other hand, if I run it manually and scaling still works even if it is terminated by Ctrl-C. Therefore, I set a timeout for it:

timeout 5s xsettingsd

The shell is placed as a login script.

[linux-aarhus]

@gigi314

What does xsettingsd do on earth?

Xsettingsd is a lightweight xsettings daemon which provides settings to Xorg applications via the XSETTINGS specification when not running one (like when using KDE).
– Xsettingsd - ArchWiki

xsettingsd