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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

enter image description here

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

hg8
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dawe134
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1 Answers1

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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:

gnome-tweak-tool screenshot
Credit to PCWorld for the screenshot

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hg8
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    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 Sep 03 '15 at 09:46
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    [Screenshot of the current situation](http://i.imgur.com/n9xkdqT.png). The right part is the external display, the left is the builtin ultrabook display. – dawe134 Sep 03 '15 at 09:53
  • 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. – dawe134 Sep 03 '15 at 09:55
  • Please refer [here](http://askubuntu.com/questions/393400/is-it-possible-to-have-two-different-dpi-configurations-for-two-different-screen) – hg8 Sep 03 '15 at 09:59
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    THANKS! Although I have the gnome screen scaling bug the thread seems like a great resource. – dawe134 Sep 07 '15 at 15:31
  • reducing the sizes on the `lesser` display can be done with ````xrandr --output eDP1 --scale 2x2```` – immeëmosol Sep 08 '16 at 17:36
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    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). – Thomas S. Nov 09 '17 at 08:11
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    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](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI#GNOME)_ – Alexander Nov 15 '17 at 02:18
  • 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 – chefarov Nov 10 '19 at 16:51