[SOLVED] Raspberry Pi GUI not showing on a monitor
There are several articles available that describe how to install Raspberry Pi OS on an SD card, and the process is really simple. But, even after carefully following all the instructions, the GUI wasn’t showing up at all for me on my LG monitor, which has a 1920x1080 resolution (144Hz).
After much angst, I discovered that the problem was caused by my monitor’s refresh rate not being compatible with the Raspberry Pi’s preconfigured settings.
If you are experiencing the same problem, you can try the methods outlined below, which worked for me.
- Download and install the Raspberry Pi imager from here.
- Choose a version of Raspberrian OS (non-lite) from the imager.
- Now go to the write options and enable SSH and add WLAN credentials
- For simplicity, keep the hostname to raspberrypi and set the username as pi and password as raspberry for the SSH authentication
- Once done, insert the SD card into the Raspberry Pi, connect it to the monitor and turn it on.
- Typically, you should be able to see the desktop screen on your monitor only after a few seconds after booting. If you cannot see it, continue to follow the steps below.
- Install VNC viewer on your PC
- Now, open the command prompt and type — ssh pi@raspberrypi
- It should prompt for a password, put the SSH password there (raspberry for this example)
- Once inside you are inside raspberry CLI, type sudo raspi-config
- You should be able to see the configuration tool
- Go to System Options -> Boot/Auto Login -> Select Desktop Autologin and save.
- Select the option to reboot once prompted
- You’ll be disconnected from the connection, follow the steps above to establish the connection from the command prompt again and open raspi-config.
- Now go to Interface Options -> Enable VNC server
- On your PC, go to the VNC viewer that you installed and put raspberrypi in the VNC server address. Complete the connection by providing the SSH credentials afterward.
- If everything goes well, you’ll be able to see the desktop from VNC.
- Go to Preferences (top left corner) by clicking on the Raspberry icon and selecting screen configuration.
- Here you can configure the resolution and refresh rate according to your monitor. Click on the tick mark once done.
- In my case, the default refresh rate was set to 144Hz. Once I set it to 60Hz, it started to display.
Many of the things I read online entailed customizing the config.txt file from the SD card’s boot location. But in my situation, they did not help at all. Even so, if the aforementioned actions don’t work, I’m offering a few resources you might find useful.
https://www.linuxfordevices.com/tutorials/linux/install-and-run-gui-raspberry-pi
