Are the text, icons, windows and images displayed on your computer screen too small or too large? Use this option to immediately find the size that suits you.
Have you just turned on your shiny new laptop for the first time and all the elements on the screen are too big, so much so that you can’t display more than one window at a time? Or have you just plugged in your cool new desktop monitor with 4K resolution and everything is so small that you can barely read the names of the icons on your desktop? Don’t panic, this is a very common situation and Windows has a very simple option to specifically address this problem.
On the Internet, it is very easy to enlarge or reduce the size of a page to your liking by using the zoom function integrated into the browser. But changing the dimensions of graphical elements of the operating system, such as icons, the taskbar or text, is not as intuitive.
Certainly, on Windows, it is possible to change the size of desktop icons like on a web page, by zooming in and out using the key Ctrl keyboard and mouse wheel. But how do I change the size of other displayed elements? If you’ve ever encountered this problem, you may have attempted to change a Windows setting called (mistakenly) Screen resolution and which appears in the form of a multiplication: 1920 x 1080, 2560 x 1440 or even 3840 x 2160. This value designates not the resolution but the definition of your screen, and if changing it allows you to enlarge or reduce the size of displayed elements, changing it often results in undesirable effects, such as unsightly horizontal stretching or general blurring on the screen.
In reality, the correct setting to use right next to the misnamed one Screen resolution. To find it, open the Settings of Windows, then go to the section System > Screen and look for an option titled Scaling. This should display a percentage value, such as 100%, 150% or 200%, perhaps followed by “(recommended)”. To change it, simply click on the percentage and select another from the drop-down list, smaller or larger depending on whether you want to shrink or enlarge your display.
The change applies immediately and you will then notice that all elements displayed on the screen, whether icons, buttons, windows or text have become larger or smaller. But unlike changing definition, scaling maintains the correct proportions of the different graphic objects and does not introduce blur into texts or images. To be exact, sometimes some older apps don’t handle scaling well and become slightly blurry. However, cases are increasingly rare and it is then possible to deactivate scaling individually for the problematic application.