HiDPI Fixer

This application allows you to create a script that accomplishes the following tasks:

• Allow fractional scaling of your display and its components in X11.
• The end result looks nicer and is way less buggy than using Wayland.
• The generated script is configured to run every time you log in.
• You can also instruct the application to modify the ~/.profile file to scale Qt-based apps, use with caution.
• Tested on GNOME, Deepin Desktop and KDE (you need to manually set the scaling factor to 200% in Deepin and KDE).

Screenshot

Note: sorry for the screenshot taken under Wayland. I haven’t really used this tool lately, but I felt the need of updating this repo after 2 years…

Installing/running

You can download the latest release as an AppImage, no installation required!
After your download finishes, open a terminal and type the following commands:

cd Downloads                    # Go to directory where you have downloaded/saved HiDPI-Fixer
chmod +x HiDPI_Fixer*.AppImage  # Make HiDPI-Fixer.AppImage executable
./HiDPI_Fixer*.AppImage         # Run HiDPI-Fixer

Uninstalling

To remove all the scripts and startup launchers generated by HiDPI Fixer, open a terminal and type the following:

cd Downloads                         # Or the location in which you have saved HiDPI-Fixer AppImage
./HiDPI_Fixer*.AppImage --uninstall  # Run uninstall command (if you are lazy, just type -u)

This command will do the following:

• Remove the ~/.hidpi-fixer directory and all its contents
• Remove all the startup applications with the name pattern as HiDPI-Fixer_*.desktop in the ~/.config/autostart directory.

All directories and files that HiDPI Fixer removes will be listed in the terminal output.

How does it work?

This application uses a combination of GNOME’s scaling-factor setting and xrandr commands. Basically, the application calculates the necessary resolution to obtain the desired scaling factor and registers a new resolution with xrandr. These commands are saved into a *.sh file for every display that you have and are configured to run at startup.

HiDPI-Fixer also works with DEs other than GNOME, however, you will need to manually set the scaling factor to 200% in the control center application of your desktop environment.

TODOs/Ideas

• [x] Allow users to choose between creating a custom resolution or using xrandr --scale, to avoid BAT MATCH errors
• [ ] Integrate run_scaled to HiDPI-Fixer, by creating custom *.desktop files in ./local/share/applications to fix apps that refuse to do any scaling at all.
• [ ] Instead of generating a startup script, allow users to apply the changes system wide.

Contributions and less-ugly fixes are welcome :octocat:

Tips

• Some applications such as WPS Office ignore completely the system’s DPI setting (and thus cannot do any scaling at all). Given that HiDPI-Fixer creates a very large resolution, it may be almost impossible to use these fixed-DPI applications. If you rely on those applications, you can run them with run_scaled, resulting in an usable, albeit blurry per-application experience. But at least your desktop and HiDPI-friendly apps will look decent 👍.
• In some cases, xrandr will not let you to use resolutions larger than your screen’s native resolution, which results in the rather-cryptic BAD MATCH error. If you have any idea how to fix this, please contact me or make a PR.

License

This project is released under the MIT license, for more info, click here.