Get Count of Connected Monitors on Linux

Monitoring active displays is useful for desktop management, scripting, or troubleshooting multi-monitor setups. Linux exposes monitor and connector status through the DRM (Direct Rendering Manager) interface, where each physical or virtual display connection is represented under the /sys/class/drm. This tutorial demonstrates how to get the count of connected monitors on Linux.

The count of connected monitors can be retrieved by scanning DRM status entries and counting those marked as connected. This approach works across most modern Linux distributions without requiring additional tools.

Each connector exposes a status file that reflects the current connection state. Typical values include connected, disconnected, and sometimes unknown.

grep -l '^connected$' /sys/class/drm/*/status | wc -l

Output example:

3

This output means that three displays are currently connected and recognized by the system, including built-in and external monitors.