Display scaling affecting sensitivity after Windows update

wintercat · January 25, 2018

Just finished watching this:

And I wanted to bring up a new issue for me that wasn't addressed in the video or the comments. I use two 1080p monitors and one 4K TV for my triple display setup. I have the TV set to 300% scaling so my poor eyes can actually make stuff out on it whenever it isn't just video content. It's placed a ways above the monitors and angled down, and I often use it from my couch across the room, so I really need the display scaling. This has always caused the usual issues when moving programs between displays and whatnot, but nothing too bad.

However, after updating to Windows 10 1709 16299.192, my sensitivity was higher on that display, and only on that display. I tested turning off display scaling, and it went away. I tested turning on 150% scaling on the monitors, and noticed an increase for those displays. No doubt about it, but any display scaling also multiplies cursor sensitivity equally; 300% scaling means 3x faster cursor, etc.

I can't find a good way to get around it without just setting display scaling to 100%. I could turn down my mouse's dpi or the sensitivity in Windows mouse settings, but that's not a good solution. Having different forced sensitivities on the different size displays really screws me, since my current dpi is already as low as it can go while still being able to cover my whole desktop in one stroke across my mousepad, corner to corner, but multiplying that dpi 2x or 3x is enough to make it super unwieldy on the big screen.

I don't think there's a fix. I've found one other person on the internet with the same problem who asked about it on the Microsoft support site. The response he got was basically, "Uh, sorry? Sounds pretty weird. Submit a support/feedback ticket I guess!" I submitted a ticket through the feedback app as well. I just wanted to bring it up and see if anyone else here has ran into the problem or can think of any solutions.

gawax · January 25, 2018

Idk man, the day microsoft actually gets organised and make a good OS, with the positives of both MacOS and Linux, you will be able to solve any problems. However right now windows is probably the worst OS out there, and sending them a ticket will only pile up with the 1000000 things they have to bring/fix/change to windows to make it a good OS.

wintercat · January 25, 2018

I know :'( I just want to feel like Tony Stark being super productive on big pretty screens, and Windows has to go and be constantly in the way. Here's another one for us multi-monitor users: Task View. I love task view, I have it bound to its own thumb button on my mouse. But why oh why can I not drag windows between displays from task view? I'm able to drag and drop them to different "virtual desktops", but I'm never gonna fucking use those. I have to do the extra steps of bringing the window I want moved into focus and dragging it from one display to another by its header bar, rather than just dragging its thumbnail in task view. I wouldn't be so mad if the hotkeys to move windows between displays actually worked. If I use Start + Shift + Left/Right Arrows to move a window between displays of different resolutions, it resizes it and then straight up makes it disappear if I do it a second time.

Colin McRae · December 13, 2021

Hey wintercat,

sorry for digging up this old thread. I just came across this issue when playing with my scaling options for no reason and want to also let off some steam about this. I saw many people complain about it, but nobody from Microsoft really seems to care about this issue, it persists in Windows 11.

What I think is happening is that somebody at Microsoft made the design decision that his behavior is favorable, because if you now set the scaling so that UI elements are the same size, you will get the same real-world cursor speed across different monitors. Also, for small 4K displays as on laptops, external mice are not painfully slow.

I am using a 1440p 27" screen and had the scaling set to 125%, because otherwise everything is a bit to small for my liking. I even tolerated the scaling blur on many unoptimised programs. And now I found out that I get pixel skipping in Windows because of this design decision on my only screen. I don't want this behavior, I could simply adjust the DPI of my mouse if my cursor felt to slow. How hard can it be for Microsoft to just add an option to disable this behavior? Now I will probably go back to 100% scaling.