Windows 10: Change DPI Scaling Level for Displays in Windows 10

How to: Change DPI Scaling Level for Displays in Windows 10

How to Change DPI Scaling Level for Displays in Windows 10


Dots per inch (DPI) is the physical measurement of number of pixels in a linear inch of a display. DPI is a function of display resolution and size; a higher resolution or a smaller size will lead to higher DPI, and a lower resolution or a larger size will lead to lower DPI. When a display has a higher DPI, pixels are smaller and closer together, so that the user interface (UI) and other displayed content appears smaller than intended.

Windows ensures that everything appears on the screen at a usable and consistent size by instructing applications (including the Windows desktop shell) to resize their content by a scale factor. This number depends on the display DPI as well as other factors that impact the users perception of the display. Almost all desktop displays and most current laptop displays are in the range of 95-110 DPI; for these devices, no scaling is required, and Windows sets a scale factor of 100%. However, there are a number of new devices, particularly in the premium laptop and tablet markets, which have higher displays with over 200 DPI. For these devices, Windows sets higher scale factors to ensure that the user experience is comfortably viewable.

When you change the DPI scaling level for your displays, it changes the size of text, apps and other items to appear larger or smaller. A higher DPI level has everything appear larger, and a lower DPI level has everything appear smaller.

The default DPI level is 100% (96 DPI).

For more about display scaling, see:

• Display Scaling in Windows 10 - Ask the Core Team - Site Home - TechNet Blogs
• Display Scaling changes for the Windows 10 Anniversary Update | Ask the Core Team
• High DPI Scaling Improvements for Desktop Applications and "Mixed Mode" DPI Scaling in the Windows 10 Anniversary Update | Building Apps for Windows

This tutorial will show you how to change the DPI scaling level for all or specific displays to make everything appear smaller or larger on the display(s) for only your account in Windows 10.

*note When you use a DPI over the default 100%, the icons of the default folders under Quick access in the navigation pane of File Explorer will be on a folder instead of just an icon like below.




*tip If you have an app that doesn't scale properly when you are using a high DPI setting, then you could use compatibility mode to Disable display scaling on high DPI settings for the app.


CONTENTS:

• Option One: To Change DPI Scaling Level Per Display in Settings app
• Option Two: To Set Custom DPI Scaling Level for All Displays in Control Panel
• Option Three: To Set Custom DPI Scaling Level for All Displays in Settings
• Option Four: To Set Custom DPI Scaling Level for All Displays in Registry Editor
• Option Five: To Restore Default DPI Scaling Level for All Displays using a REG file

OPTION ONE [/i] To Change DPI Scaling Level Per Display in Settings app
1. Do step 2 or step 3 below for what you would like to open Display in Settings.

2. Open step 4 below.

3. Right click or press and hold on your desktop, click/tap on Display, and go to step 4 below. (see screenshot below)



4. Click/tap on Display on the left side. (see screenshot below step 6)

5. If you have more than one display connected to your PC, then select a display at the top on the right side that you want to change the DPI of. (see screenshot below step 6)

*note If all your displays are not shown, then click/tap on the Detect link to see if Windows can find it. If you are not sure which display belongs to what number, then you can click/tap on the Identify link to have each display's number briefly appear on each display to see.

6. Under Change the size of text, apps, and other items, select the DPI percentage from the drop down you want to set for that display. (see screenshot below)

*note This setting is stored as the DpiValue DWORD data value in a long subkey per display in the registry location below.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\PerMonitorSettings



7. Click/tap on the Sign out now link to apply. (see screenshot below)

*note Starting with Windows 10 build 17083, your DPI scaling changes are applied instantly without the need to sign out.








OPTION TWO [/i] To Set Custom DPI Scaling Level for All Displays in Control Panel

*note This option is no longer available starting with Windows 10 build 15019.
1. Open the Control Panel (icons view), and click/tap on the Display icon.

2. Under Change size of items, click/tap on the set a custom scaling level link. (see screenshot below)



3. Do step 3 or step 5 below for how you want to set a custom DPI.

4. Drag the ruler left or right to the scaling percentage you want, click/tap on OK, and go to step 6 below. (see screenshots below)





5. Select the scaling percentage you want in the drop down menu, click/tap on OK, and go to step 6 below. (see screenshot below)



6. Click/tap on Apply. (see screenshot below)



7. Click/tap on Sign out now. (see screenshot below)








OPTION THREE [/i] To Set Custom DPI Scaling Level for All Displays in Settings

*note This option is only available starting with Windows 10 build 15019.
1. Open Settings, and click/tap on the System icon.

2. Click/tap on Display on the left side, and click/tap on the Custom scaling link under Scale and layout on the right side. (see screenshot below)

*note Starting with Windows 10 build 17063, you would click/tap on the Advanced scaling settings link instead of a Custom scaling link.



3. Enter a custom scaling size between 100-500 % you want for all displays, and click/tap on Apply. (see screenshot below)



4. Click/tap on Sign out now to apply. (see screenshot below)



*tip To turn off custom scaling:

A) Open Settings, and click/tap on the System icon.

B) Click/tap on Display on the left side, and click/tap on the Turn off custom scaling and sign out link under Scale and layout on the right side. (see screenshot below)








OPTION FOUR [/i] To Set Custom DPI Scaling Level for All Displays in Registry Editor
1. Type regedit in the search box (Windows+S) on the Start menu or taskbar, and click/tap on OK to open Registry Editor.

2. If prompted by UAC, click/tap on Yes.

3. In Registry Editor, navigate to the location below. (see screenshot below)
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop




4. In the right pane of the Desktop key, double click/tap on the LogPixels DWORD to modify it. (see screenshot above)

*note If the LogPixels DWORD doesn't exist, then right click or press and hold on an empty area in the right pane of the Desktop key, click/tap on New, click/tap on DWORD (32-bit) Value, type LogPixels, and press Enter.

5. Select (dot) Decimal, type in the value data from the table below for the DPI scaling level you want, and click/tap on OK. (see screenshot below)




[table][tr][td]DPI Scaling Level [/td] [td]Value data[/td] [/tr] [tr][td]Smaller 100% (default)[/td] [td]96[/td] [/tr] [tr][td]Medium 125%[/td] [td]120[/td] [/tr] [tr][td]Larger 150%[/td] [td]144[/td] [/tr] [tr][td]Extra Large 200%[/td] [td]192[/td] [/tr] [tr][td]Custom 250%[/td] [td]240[/td] [/tr] [tr][td]Custom 300%[/td] [td]288[/td] [/tr] [tr][td]Custom 400%[/td] [td]384[/td] [/tr] [tr][td]Custom 500%[/td] [td]480[/td] [/tr] [/table]

6. In the right pane of the Desktop key, double click/tap on the Win8DpiScaling DWORD to modify it. (see screenshot below)

*note If the Win8DpiScaling DWORD doesn't exist, then right click or press and hold on an empty area in the right pane of the Desktop key, click/tap on New, click/tap on DWORD (32-bit) Value, type Win8DpiScaling, and press Enter.



7. Type 0 or 1 for the value data based on the table below, and click/tap on OK. (see screenshot below)
[table][tr][td]Value data[/td] [td]Description[/td] [/tr] [tr][td]0[/td] [td]Enter 0 if you used 96 in step 5 for no custom DPI scaling.[/td] [/tr] [tr][td]1[/td] [td]Enter 1 if you used any other size in step 5 for custom DPI scaling.[/td] [/tr] [/table]



8. Close Registry Editor.

9. sign in to Windows to apply.





OPTION FIVE [/i] To Restore Default DPI Scaling Level for All Displays using a REG file
1. Click/tap on the Download button below to download the file below.
Restore_Default_DPI_in_Windows_10.reg

Download
2. Save the .reg file to your desktop.

3. Double click/tap on the downloaded .reg file to merge it.

4. If prompted, click on Run, Yes (UAC), Yes, and OK to approve the merge.

5. sign in to Windows to apply.

6. You can now delete the downloaded .reg file if you like.

That's it,
Shawn


Related Tutorials

• How to Change Screen Resolution of Displays in Windows 10
• How to Change Screen Refresh Rate of a Display in Windows 10
• How to Change Text Size in Windows 10
• How to Change Text Size for Icons in Windows 10
• How to Change Text Size for Menus in Windows 10
• How to Change Text Size for Message Boxes in Windows 10
• How to Change Text Size for Title Bars in Windows 10
• How to Change Text Size for Tooltips in Windows 10
• How to Change Settings and Layout for Multiple Displays in Windows 10
• How to Change Display Scaling Zoom Level of Hyper-V Virtual Machine in Windows 10
• How to Turn On or Off Fix Scaling for Apps that are Blurry in Windows 10
• How to See DPI Awareness of Running Apps in Task Manager in Windows 10
• How to Clear and Reset External Display Cache in Windows 10

:)

 

Customizing font and text in Windows 10, browsers, apps, etc

Try changing display scaling: Change DPI Scaling Level for Displays in Windows 10

 

Font/ icon size in Windows 10!

try these:

Change DPI Scaling Level for Displays in Windows 10

 

Hello Joanne, *Smile

The selected DPI would be applied to everything. Did you sign out/in or restart afterwards to fully apply?

The .reg file option is removed now, since it no longer has any affect though.

 

Ah yes, you are right Brink, I'm sorry.

The custom DPI setting does increase the size of everything. It does not resolve the blurry text issue on all those windows components and menus, though. I've already resolved this. Got confused, sorry.

*Smile

 

Yeah, it would be nice to set a custom SPI without risk of slightly blurry text.

 

Unfortunately, the DPI problem in Windows 10 is very serious. I have many system windows and non-Microsoft programs that are extremely blurry. Using 125% DPI and the "Let me choose one scaling level for all my displays" setting which helped, is gone.

This is the only solution that currently works for me - it seems that with every new Windows edition, more and more hacks and workarounds are required to make it work sanely.

Interesting info here too, and an alternative fix.

 

Guys, hoping that you will be able to help.

I have tried all settings/tools available - WinAero Tweaker, Xplorer DPI and the Registry trick from this thread. However, the blurry text issue is not solved. Any thoughts could it be related to hardware/driver issue in my case (please see PC specs under my name/profile)? The display hardware is ATI HD 6650 which is built into the APU A8-3850. The PC is about 3~3.5 yrs old now. Also, the monitor is working on VGA rather than DVI, ever since my graphics card conked off (Sapphire ATI HD 7750).

Please provide your thoughts.

Update:
Mild OC was enabled in the BIOS. The figure was set to 105% of CPU speed. This worked fine with dedicated graphics card. However, with in-built graphics, this does not seem to work. I remember this issue long back too with Win 7. When I increased the percentage to 101 or more, the font would become blurry. This is same issue with Win 10.
Now, I have set the frequency to 100% and the fonts are much better. I cannot say that they are great, but they are much better. As someone mentioned, Win 10 bumps the DPI to 125% by default. So, everything seems bigger, but is also not as crisp. Hope this helps others who may have similar issues.

 

Hello him,

The VGA connection doesn't help, but anytime you change the DPI, I've noticed text to be a bit blurry. It appears to be a bug from not using the recommended (default) DPI and screen resolution. *Sad

 

Using a Monoprice 30" monitor capable of 2560x1600 resolution connected with an HDMI cable to my PC video card.

Followed your steps to set custom scaling level to 150%. This is necessary to make various windows and fonts legible on this large high resolution monitor. Bit this results in my resolution (as reported by Speccy) to fall from 2560x1600 to 1707x1067. [Control Panel shows screen resolution set at the native 2560x1600, as does the NVidia Control Panel.] If I remember right, this did not happen with Windows 7.

How can I have larger legible fonts in all the programs and the desktop and still keep my resolution at 2560x1600?

 

Hello Kumar, and welcome to Ten Forums. *Smile

It may be an incompatibility issue with Speccy if it's showing the correct resolution in Settings and the Control Panel.

I'm afraid that it seems blurry text is a side effect of setting a higher DPI so far. You might see if playing with different combinations of DPI and resolution settings may help. In addition, make sure you have the latest video driver installed. Next, you might all see if using the ClearType Text Tuner may help.

 

"It may be an incompatibility issue with Speccy if it's showing the correct resolution in Settings and the Control Panel."

Thanks for the quick response, Brink. Just to be clear, with custom scaling level set to 100%, Speccy reports resolution of 2560x1600; at custom scaling level set at 150%, reports 1707x1068; at 125%, reports an in-between number.

It would appear to me that increasing the custom scaling level above 100% results in Windows achieving this by reducing the resolution.

 

I'm not sure, but Speccy hasn't had a new version since Jan. 23rd 2015. The next new version should tell the tale though.

For now, you might see if ClearType Text Tuner may help some.

 

Will do as you suggest.

Above screen shots show Speccy results with custom scaling set at 100% and 125%. Suggests that Speccy is working OK at 100%, so likely to be correct at 125% also.

 

Seems so. I hope ClearType Text Tuner will help.