Windows 10 blurry applications

[Evellence]

Hello!

 

So i had this problem for a while now. I solved it before on other PC but i cant remember how i did it exactly, was long time ago.

So every application is blurry, and in order to fix it i need to "Disable display scaling on high DPI settings", like in picture there. I have to do that for every application, which has become quite annoying, and some applications make a new shortcut when updated so it overrides that. Also, for some windows its impossible to do that (like right window on picture)

 

Other option is to lower the scaling in display settings, which disables automatically scaling on high DPI settings, but at cost of everything is smaller, which i don't want.

 

 

 

[Guest]

Windows is just like that, either you do 100%, 200% (scaling in display settings) and so on, the settings inbetween will cause blurryness (same thing on my laptop)

[MrDrWho13]

What resolution is your monitor, and what resolution have you chosen in Windows?

[Enderman]

The only solution is to set windows scaling to 100% or not use windows.

[Guest]

Just now, Enderman said:

The only solution is to set windows scaling to 100% or not use windows.

200% would work without issues too (just not inbetween).

[Evellence]

1 minute ago, MrDrWho13 said:

What resolution is your monitor, and what resolution have you chosen in Windows?

15.6" Laptop, 1920x1080 

 

2 minutes ago, Enderman said:

The only solution is to set windows scaling to 100% or not use windows.

Welp

[GoodBytes]

So the way it works is quiet interesting.

 

You see, back in the 90's the concept of high-DPI display was not even in people minds. All people had in mind is larger resolution -> bigger display.

The possibility of 4K on a <30inch display, or even just 1080p on a small screen was just crazy talk. This is the area of when Win32 framework was created, and around that time when all popular GUI framework by Microsoft and others where made. Microsoft tried to push the concept of High-DPI in Windows XP, as the company saw that such display was coming, but to dev eyes, this was just ignored totally, didn't even cross the mind of most, especially that, well, they were no such display on the consumer market that can be easily acquired, beside the odd device here and there with a tiny market share so no one could justify the cost to even just test. In fact, towards the end of life of Windows 7, we started to see at a more common level high resolution small screen.

 

As a result, most programs aren't high-DPI aware. So now, when you adjust the display scaling, most programs aren't supported. You need to restart your computer (well sign-out and back in, really) when you adjust the display scaling as Win32 engine need to refresh (and many program not even expecting this from happening would/could crash. So asking to do this by Windows, is an assured way that you save all your stuff, close nicely all software). So if you don't restart (well logout and log back-in) Windows just does a preview.

 

That said, Microsoft did release over the year new GUI frameworks which does support high-DPI, and also dynamic switching of display scaling. That is how the majority of Windows looks right when you adjust the display scaling, even right away (no need to logout).

 

Ok so, what Windows does with incompatible programs? It either:

1. Inject code into the program GUI framework to make the window of the program larger, and make text larger. This only works on Microsoft own GUI framework though. If its made with something else, then sadly it can't guess how the GUI framework is made. And they are so many, and so many versions, that Microsoft is not interested in figuring it out, especially that they want devs to do the work and update their stuff, and not ignore the issue because "Microsoft will do it for us". The downside of this, is that on simple program it works, but on complex layout things might look out of place, and small icons are made big resulting looking pixelate as the program doesn't have a higher resolution of these images. But, at least the program is nice and sharp and readable.
    
2. Take the program it can't do the above, and just scale it big like an image. This results in the program looking blurry.

 

So, the only fix, is time. We can see that (aside from Windows built-in programs): Chrome, Firefox (and IE and Edge) all support high Display Scaling. Same for the recent versions of Office, Visual Studio, FileZilla FTP client, Skype, PhotoShop, PowerArchiver, Paint.NET, and many many more have been updated to support high-Display Scaling. Sadly, Steam isn't. This is probably because they went with a custom GUI framework, and in order to support high-Display Scaling, they need massive amount of work, and I don't think the company is willing to do it, or are doing in the back and will take time. All we can do is push these companies to update their software to be high-DPI aware. If people complain, they'll see that, yes, indeed their users do have high-DPI displays, and need to update their stuff, if not, competition can take over what they have, because their program operate better with their system.