Support workspace binding by monitor position/coordinates to handle identical monitors that swap connector assignments

[nlbadia]

Description

My physical setup includes my laptop and 3 external monitors. My intention is for my virtual layout to match my physical layout, which is roughly like this (laptop display centered beneath the middle external monitor):

Physical Layout:
+----------+  +----------+  +----------+
|  MSI-L   |  |  Arzopa  |  |  MSI-R   |
| (left)   |  | (center) |  | (right)  |
| 3840x2160|  | 3840x2160|  | 3840x2160|
+----------+  +----------+  +----------+
     0x0         2560x0       5120x0
              +----------+
              |  Laptop  |
              |1920x1200 |
              +----------+
                3114x1440

Two of my monitors are physically the same (both MSIs are the exact same model), upon login/restart, Hyprland randomly assigns them to different connector names (e.g., DVI-I-1 andDVI-I-3) on each boot/login. This causes workspace bindings and positioning to break because the workspaces are bound to connector names rather than physical monitor positions. I'm unsure as to why my two MSI monitors have identical serial numbers; I tried (with LLM help, as I'm out of my depth here) to play around with different system settings/configs to mitigate this, but wasn't successful (I attempted to generate and modify a monitor.inf file, so I could differentiate the two MSI monitors in GRUB, but that just broke things and I gave up). 100% admitting I don't really know what I'm doing with this issue; I tried other various fixes I found online to no avail. I also understand that this is likely a Wayland limitation, but I'm not sure.

Expected Behavior

Workspaces should remain bound to the same physical monitor position regardless of which connector name gets assigned to that monitor on boot.

Current Behavior

Workspace bindings follow the connector name (DVI-I-1, DVI-I-2, etc.) rather than the physical position. When identical monitors swap connector assignments on reboot, workspaces end up on different physical monitors than intended. This requires reassignment every time I boot up my computer (and even sometimes upon waking from sleep, though this hasn't happened often).

Hardware

• Laptop: Lenovo T16 G2 (AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 7840U with Integrated Radeon 780M Graphics)
• External Monitors: 3 monitors via DisplayLink dock
  • 2x MSI MAG 274UPF E2, 27in, 4K (identical: same make/model/serial 0x00000001)
  • 1x Arzopa, 32in 4K
• Connection: Left MSI via DisplayPort, right MSI and Arzopa via HDMI

Current Configuration

# monitors.conf
monitor=DVI-I-1,[email protected],0x0,1.5       # Left position (but randomly assigned)
monitor=DVI-I-2,[email protected],2560x0,1.5     # Center position (Arzopa - stable)
monitor=DVI-I-3,[email protected],5120x0,1.5     # Right position (but randomly assigned)
monitor=eDP-1,[email protected],3061x1440,1.33

# Workspace bindings
workspace=1,monitor:eDP-1,default:true
workspace=2,monitor:DVI-I-1,default:true  # Should be left MSI
workspace=3,monitor:DVI-I-2,default:true  # Center Arzopa (works consistently)
workspace=4,monitor:DVI-I-3,default:true  # Should be right MSI

Problem Details

The two MSI monitors report identical information:

[email protected] at ##x##
description: Microstep MAG 274UPF E2 0x00000001
make: Microstep
model: MAG 274UPF E2
physical size (mm): 590x340
serial: 0x00000001

On each boot/logout, there's approximately a 50/50 chance that DVI-I-1 and DVI-I-3 will swap their assignments to the two physical MSI monitors. This causes workspace 2 to appear on the right monitor and workspace 4 on the left monitor (or vice versa), requiring manual reconfiguration every time.

Proposed Solution

Thought briefly that adding support for binding workspaces by monitor position coordinates instead of only by connector name could work, but if there's no way of distinguishing displays software-wise, this can't be done. Not sure if maybe the port they're connected to could maybe be used as part of the configuration for hyprctl? If that'd be possible then, I'm assuming at least, one could be able to differentiate the displays because the physical ports should have IDs that don't change and are thus tied to one monitor? I have no clue what I'm talking about, so please feel free to tell me if this wouldn't work/be possible.

Hyprland Version

Hyprland 0.52.1 built from branch v0.52.1 at commit 967c3c7404d4fa00234e29c70df3e263386d2597 clean (version: bump to 0.52.1).
Date: Sun Nov 9 23:31:36 2025
Tag: v0.52.1, commits: 6564

Libraries:
Hyprgraphics: built against 0.3.0, system has 0.3.0
Hyprutils: built against 0.10.2, system has 0.10.2
Hyprcursor: built against 0.1.13, system has 0.1.13
Hyprlang: built against 0.6.3, system has 0.6.3
Aquamarine: built against 0.9.5, system has 0.9.5

Additional Context

• Using Omarchy with DisplayLink drivers (evdi + displaylink)
  • Using default Omarchy configurations for everything (this is a fresh installation that I've barely modified beyond the theme and a couple of keybinds).
• Different connection types (DisplayPort vs HDMI) don't affect the randomness
• The Arzopa monitor has a unique description and consistently gets assigned correctly
• Currently no workaround exists other than manually reconfiguring workspace bindings after each boot

---

I've looked everywhere for a fix but couldn't find one. If I just missed something, please show me. None of the discussions tagged with DRM matched my issue, and I found no other solutions in other repos, Reddit or on Discord.