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Overview · Marshal

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The Marshal, which keeps your displays as you set them

How the Marshal checks your displays and game controllers every few minutes, says when one is below its best or an update changed it, and sets it right with one click that undoes itself unless you keep it.

Article
3101
Applies to
Marshal 0.1.0
Last reviewed
For
For everyone

What the Marshal does#

The marshal kept order in the hall: everyone in their place, as the lord had set it. The Marshal keeps your displays in theirs.

After a graphics driver or Windows update, a display can come back at 60 Hz instead of 144, or below its resolution, and nobody says so. The Marshal does, and fixes it when you ask.

It holds its office on a gamer's PC, with the Reckoner behind it, which keeps track of every other device. On an everyday PC, the Reckoner holds it.

The Marshal comes with the Household license. It uses no AI.

What it checks#

Every 5 minutes, changing nothing:

  • Each display: the monitor, the resolution and refresh rate it runs at, the largest resolution it offers, the highest refresh rate at that resolution, and whether it offers HDR and has it on.
  • Game controllers: each one Windows has, and whether it reports a problem.
  • The graphics drivers and Windows' build, to tell when an update came.

What it tells you#

  • A display below its best: below its largest resolution, or below the highest refresh rate it offers at this one.
  • HDR the display offers, left off.
  • A controller with a problem.
  • What an update changed: after a new graphics driver or Windows build, a refresh rate or resolution that dropped, HDR turned off, a display gone, or a controller with a problem or no longer seen.

Leave it as it is, or Leave HDR off, keeps a display as you chose it, and it isn't suggested again.

Set it right, safely#

  1. Press the button beside a suggestion: Set to 144 Hz, Set to 2560×1440 or Turn HDR on, say. The Marshal makes that change, and only that: Windows tests a new mode first, then sets it.
  2. Keep it shows, with a countdown, 15 seconds.
  3. Press Keep it if the screen looks right. If you don't, the change undoes itself, as Windows' own display settings do, so a change that leaves the screen dark or wrong puts itself back.

One change at a time.

Its page#

The Marshal's page is at http://marshal.localhost:21313/, and Open on its card in Castellan goes there. It shows each display and what it runs at, what's below its best, what the last update changed, the controllers, and Look now.

Its settings#

SettingDefaultWhat it does
Check game controllersOnLook at the controllers too.
Look every5 minutes1 to 60 minutes.
Put a display back after (Advanced)15 seconds10 to 60. How long Keep it waits.

What it can't do#

  • HDR on a laptop can be kept off by Windows on battery. Turning HDR on then says it couldn't.
  • G-SYNC, FreeSync and your graphics card's own control panel aren't read.
  • A controller that's off or unplugged looks the same as one Windows lost: the Marshal says it "isn't seen", not that it broke.

Related articles

Is this page right?

If something on it is wrong or out of date, tell us and we'll fix the page.

Still stuck? Write to support@castellan-software.com and mention article 3101. Every version of Marshal, and what changed in it, is in its release notes.