Microsoft Weekly

How to change display scaling

By Ed Bott

Modern laptops, especially high-end models aimed at creative professionals and gamers, often include 4K and even 5K displays with extremely high resolutions. Having all those pixels makes for super sharp images, but even on a 15-inch laptop, running Windows at that native resolution will make screen elements so small you need the eyesight of a red-tailed hawk to use it.

To make things easier on your eyesight, Windows scales the display so that multiple pixels combine to a more reasonable effective resolution. At 200% scaling, for example, a 3200x1800 display acts like an extremely detailed 1600x900 display.

You can change the scaling factor to make desktop objects larger or smaller. At 250% on that 3200x1800 display, you sacrifice the ability to see lots of windows at one time in exchange for an effective resolution of 1280x720.

To see which scaling options are available in Windows 10, go to Settings > System > Display and use the options under the Scale & Layout heading. If you choose a scaling factor other than the Recommended option, be prepared to deal with occasional apps that look too large or too small because they weren't designed to scale properly.

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