Display Resolution and Scale Settings
In most cases, the display resolution and scaling options which your computer will have configured by default should make for a fully-functional experience.
However, in some limited scenarios, especially with unusual display equipment (especially-large displays, especially-small displays with high resolution, unusual equipment like a Lightboard, etc.), there may be a need to change your resolution and/or scale settings in order for text to be comfortably legible and/or for all of a software application's options to function correctly.
This article will briefly cover how to change these settings, and provide a small amount of background on why you might do so.
The processes covered here shouldn't be necessary in most scenarios
If you can comfortably read text on your display and aren't experiencing any issues with making use of your device, you shouldn't need to adjust any of the settings demonstrated here.
Display Resolution
To summarize, each usable point, or pixel, of a digital display has an "assigned seat" in a big grid.
The columns and rows in this grid give display resolutions their value — for example, 1920 x 1080 (AKA "1080p", "Full HD") is 1920 pixel columns wide and 1080 pixel rows tall.
With extremely few exceptions, modern digital displays can communicate with the device they're connected to in order to identify the physical arrangement of pixels they have been constructed with.
This "Native" or Recommended resolution is automatically selected by Windows, and can normally be left alone.
Changing it
Locate any "empty" spot on your desktop – a place that doesn't have a file, shortcut, or file folder – and Right-Click it to open the Windows context menu.
One of the most-accessible options here is the Display settings menu – click it to open up the Display menu within Windows's Settings.
Depending on how many displays you have at your workstation, this menu can look a little different — for example, if you only have one display, the section at the top of this demonstration image, for managing multiple displays, will be omitted entirely.
If you have multiple displays, take note you can only change the resolution of one of them at a time. You can click the Identify button to have each display's numerical identifier flash on your screens. Select the correct display by clicking it in the multi-display area.
The Display resolution is listed as the second option in the Scale & layout section.
It will indicate the currently-configured resolution. Click this to see what other resolutions are available to change your display to utilize.
Click to select whichever resolution you expect will help to improve any issues you are seeing.When you've selected a new resolution, your display(s) will flicker for a moment as your computer and displays get "re-acquainted" with each other.
This is normal – don't be alarmed!
After your computer and displays are behaving normally again, a 15 second countdown timer will begin.
If this countdown is allowed to expire, your change will be automatically reverted — this is a fail-safe to ensure any adjustments you make to your display resolution don't inadvertently stop you from being able to use your computer!If you are satisfied with how your displays look with the updated resolution, click Keep changes to stop the countdown and save them.
If you aren't satisfied, click Revert, or allow the countdown to expire.
Display Scale
Scale is simpler to grasp if you grasp Resolution already — the Scale will simply change how many pixels are actually used to draw different elements on your screen.
Especially with the development of extremely high resolution but physically small displays, Microsoft has implemented display scaling behavior for specific elements into Windows to help simplify making programs function correctly across wide ranges of resolution and physical display size.
Imagine a properly-scaled image containing some amount of text on a large 3840 x 2160 ("4K UHD") television screen, and then simply shrinking the entire screen down to the 14 inch display of a UNI-standard Dell laptop, while keeping the relative size of the pixels (and text on screen) the same proportionate scale.
Despite taking up just as many pixels, the text would become unreadably small due to the pixels themselves being smaller & denser!
This specific problem is one among many that the easily-accessible Scaling options are meant to resolve.
Changing it
Refer to steps 1 through 3 of the instructions on changing Resolution, above, to open and familiarize yourself with the Display settings menu.
The Scale is listed as the first option in the Scale & layout section.
It will indicate the currently-configured scale. Click this to see what other scales are available.
Click to select whichever other scale option you expect will help to improve any issues you are seeing — pick larger scales to make things larger when they're too small, and smaller scales to shrink things when they're too big.If you find you have selected a scale which isn't ideal, you can easily change to a different option at any time.
If you would like to revert to the original option, the choice marked with the text "(Recommended)" is what will have been selected by default.