How to change retina display system settings in OSX?

Question

I am wondering if there is a way to programmatically change the current display mode set in the system settings? In particular, I want to be able to detect and switch between 5 Retina display modes on the new Retina MacBook Pro.

I looked at NSUserDefaults NSGlobalDomain to try to find how to change the current display mode in System Preferences, and could not find anything related to the display.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Check out http://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/vi9yf/set_your_retina_macbook_pros_resolution_to/ - uses the private API CGSGetDisplayModeDescriptionOfLength and CGSConfigureDisplayMode to install. The code is included in a kindly distributed .app package.

I just wrote a long post about my endeavors, trying to answer the same question - see http://garethjenkins.com/2012/07/01/investigating-a-high-resolution-retina-utility-for-macbook- pro-1x-and-2x-modes /