How to set up Gnome interface for HiDPI screen?

Question

I have a 3200x1800 ultrabook and I would like to decrease the resolution of the screen 2x. The problem is that once I do it all the GUI elements increase in size too much

Is there a way how to scale down the size of everything that Gnome Shell shows ?

Solution

Your best bet is to keep the 3200x1800 resolution and just change the interface scaling factor of GNOME.

Command line method:

Open a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and execute :

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface scaling-factor 2

You can reset this setting later by running :

gsettings reset org.gnome.desktop.interface scaling-factor

---

Graphical method:

You can use the gnome-tweak-tool:

sudo apt-get install gnome-tweak-tool 

Go to "Windows" and set "Window Scaling" to 2:

^{Credit to PCWorld for the screenshot}

Comments

[hg8]

What do you mean by decrease resolution ? You used a 1080p resolution ?

[dawe134]

sorry for not being precise ... by the decrease I mean from 3200x1800 to 1920x1080

[dawe134]

Thanks, it seems that this fixes the issue to some extent on my primary builtin 3200x1800 display. However, once I connect a secondary one which has a native resolution of 1920x1080 the secondary display shows the same issue. Setting the scaling factor to a lower value doesnt really improve the situation.

[dawe134]

Screenshot of the current situation. The right part is the external display, the left is the builtin ultrabook display.

[dawe134]

I tried to decrease the resolution of the primary display to the same resolution of the secondary and then setting the scaling-factor to a lower value but it seems that the scaling factor does not allow fractional values.

[hg8]

Please refer here

[dawe134]

THANKS! Although I have the gnome screen scaling bug the thread seems like a great resource.

[immeëmosol]

reducing the sizes on the lesser display can be done with xrandr --output eDP1 --scale 2x2

[Thomas S.]

Neither of these options work on Ubuntu 17.10, in Gnome-Tweak-Tools there is no "Window scaling" option on this page (but others like in the above screenshot).

[Alexander]

On my Ubuntu 17.10 I tried doing gsettings set org.gnome.mutter experimental-features "['scale-monitor-framebuffer']" but it didn't add any settings. I didn't have an HDPI section in the tweak tool. The only thing that worked was gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface scaling-factor 2 after logging out and logging back in. Scaling-factor can only take integers

[chefarov]

This was in Unity back then. In gnome, Window scaling is not enabled by default in Tweaks, so you missed a step. Also it will only work with integer factors like 2, not 1.5. Finally this is only possible for gnome-shell >= 3.30 which is NOT currently available for latest LTS (18.04), its still ... 3.28