autodetect

English

Etymology

auto- +‎ detect

Verb

autodetect (third-person singular simple present autodetects, present participle autodetecting, simple past and past participle autodetected)

1. (transitive) To detect automatically.

   The computer failed to autodetect my new printer, so I had to install its software manually.

   • 1975, 1975 International Symposium on Fault-Tolerant Computing: Paris, France, June 18-20, 1975: Digest of Papers:

     system is in an un-failed state or an autodetected failed state

   • 1999, Carolyn P. Meinel, The happy hacker: a guide to (mostly) harmless computer hacking:

     Alternatively, install Caldera Linux, which autodetects hardware better than any other Linux, or OpenBSD, which autodetects the best of the BSDs.

   • 2006, Duane K. Fields, IntelliJ IDEA in Action:

     If you have an existing working directory that is in your IDEA project's source path, and you've enabled CVS for your project, IDEA autodetects these CVS control folders and begins using version control for those files immediately.

Related terms

• autodetection