Windows 10 on laptop

DotoreN · September 16, 2015

I currently installed windows 10 on my laptop with a res of 1920x1080 15". I do love the OP windows 10, but it has one major flaw which I don't know how to fix.

If I set my display text to 125% (which is default), every program I open including webbrowser looks blurry. If this is set to 100%, everything is fine but everything is extremely small. I currently have display on 125% and have every program set to "ignore DPI settings" or something like that, which makes text look clear, but small..

Is there any way to fix this issue or should we just wait for an update?

GoodBytes · September 16, 2015

Once you set your Windows DPI, you need to sign out and back in for everything to look right, else you only get a preview what it will look like, until your sign out and go back in.

If you have done do, then you need High-DPI aware programs. If you use old programs, or non-high-DPI aware, Windows will scale the program like an image, bugger (with some filtering, hence why it looks blurry).

High-DPI aware programs like the latest version of Firefox, Edge web browser, Visual Studio 2015, Office 2013 suit, FileZilla, latest PhotoShop, Windows Media Player 12, etc. Will appear perfectly well.

For non high-DPI ready software, I would suggest first to contact the software company and express your feedback for High-DPI support, so that it will come, especially if you have support of others. So bugs them, you loose nothing. If anything, even if they just ignore your e-mail, you are pushing awareness for them to go "Many of our users uses high DPI screens, maybe it might be worth spending a time making our software high-DPI aware). Then, meanwhile, if you don't like the blur effect, you can right-click on the program shortcut or executable, and select 'Properties'. A panel will open, on it go to 'Compatibility' tab, and check the box 'Disable display scaling on high DPI settings'.

What will happen now, is that the program won't scale bigger, it is will show at 100%, and new to Windows 10, it will try to force the program to show bigger text. I say try, because they are a great variety of GUI frameworks on Windows, and that Microsoft can only inject it's code to make the text bigger if it uses one of the ones from Microsoft. Text might be slightly cut because of this, but it should be doing a pretty good job, considering the fact that the program isn't high-DPI aware. If it can't (because it uses a different GUI framework than Microsoft one), then the text will remain small. So you'll have a mix of great looking programs, and others small, until the developers update their software.

Funny thing, at work, I am working on just that, making our software high-DPI aware.