Windows 10 Per-App Scaling?

Question

I'm on a 15.6 inch 3840x2160 display, and scaling it at 150% gives me a perfect mix of lots of real estate and readable text size, but non-DPI aware apps have blurry text.

Is there any way to scale all normal(DPI-Aware) apps at 150%, but scale non-DPI aware apps at 200%?

I was imagining some registry hack that changed the default scaling value (the one that is used when you check "disable scaling for this app" to 200% or something, but I can't figure out exactly how to do it. Anyone have any ideas?

Thanks!

Solution 1

As of this moment, the answer is plain and simple - NO.

It is understandable to implement this feature is a bit tricky, but it's a long time since Windows 10 Beta and the launch. The following is credited to be a direct quote from Microsoft developers over the scaling issue sourced from here.

"Scaling is a complex problem for the open Windows ecosystem, which has to support devices ranging in size from roughly 4” to 84,” with densities ranging from 50DPI to 500DPI. In Windows 10 we took steps to consolidate and simplify our developer story for scaling and to improve the end-user visual experience. Stay tuned for future release!"

Now let's move to the official Microsoft help page, in this case their Technet magazine tip on how to Fix Scaling Issues on Windows 7

If you’ve enabled scaling and the text in an application is blurred or unreadable, you may want to disable display scaling for that particular application. To do this, right-click the application’s shortcut and then click Properties. On the Compatibility tab, select Disable Display Scaling On High DPI Settings, and then click OK.

Alright, now we've seen the older help page, let's see Windows 10 version of fixing the scaling issues on their help page. I really want to quote the entire page here, it's just that hilarious, but I'll let you construe the entirety of it. I'll just quote Solution 2:

You can disable display scaling for an individual desktop app in Windows 10. Here’s how:

Step 1: Select the search box in the taskbar, enter run programs, and then select Run programs made for previous versions of Windows in the search results.

Step 2: In the Program Compatibility Troubleshooter, select Next.

Step 3: Select your program from the list, and then select Next.

Step 4: Select Troubleshoot program, select The program opens but doesn’t display correctly, and then select Next.

Step 5: Select Program does not display properly when large scale font settings are selected, and then select Next.

Step 6: Select Test the Program to open the app with the new settings. If it works, select Next and save the settings. Otherwise, select Cancel.

Unsurprisingly, all these steps ever achieve is to Disable Display Scaling On High DPI. The same which was mentioned earlier in the windows 7 solution.

So, it is now clear that there is no possibility to change scaling per application, unless it's developer implements it as a DPI-aware desktop or win32 application.

Since we have no official confirmation, it is not clear if this feature will be implemented within Windows in the foreseeable future.

Solution 2

Not as far as I know in my experiments with windows scaling. Its either on or off - unless the application is aware of it, like CC2014 is and lets you set your own variable. This seemed to be the case with windows 8

The closest thing I can think of to a per app 'scaling' option is the magnifier on windows, perhaps with the lens view

Comments

[user377178]

Or just create a shortcut to your app, right click on it to open the shortcut's properties and on 'Compatibility' tab tick 'Disable display scaling on high DPI settings'. Nonetheless credit to Michael D as only figured this out using his solution as a clue.

[goofology]

'Disable display scaling on high DPI settings' no longer an option - at least in v1803.

[NeilWang]

On a recent Windows 10 version(mine is 1909), there's a "Change high DPI settings" under the "Compatibility" tab. It can override the scale settings per app and works for me.