Arch Linux

mcComBat

Member

Registered: 2011-06-17

Posts: 7

Display scaling with external monitors

Hi,
I have an a laptop with a HiDPI internal monitor, and whenever I connect my external displays to it, or disconnect them, I have to manually set the scaling settings, and restart gnome to make everything usable.

The commands I am running when I want to switch to no scaling (regular external monitors):

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface scaling-factor 1
gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.xsettings overrides "{'Gdk/WindowScalingFactor': <1>}"

When I want to go back commands are same just with the value of 2.

I am currently using the default gnome option of Wayland which makes it very inconvenient to restart it - I can't do the regular 'Alt+F2 -> r -> Enter' sequence, as gnome is the compositor, and I'll lose my session, so I actually have to fully log out and login after changing the settings.

I'm pretty sure there some setting I'm missing or something as I would expect Wayland to scale automatically, and that's not even talking about the fact that from my understanding Wayland is capable of per monitor scaling which should allow me to use my internal HiDPI along with external regular monitors, as it does not have a single "display" as X.

Would be really grateful if someone could help me resolve this problem.

P.S. My gnome version:

$ pacman -Q gnome-shell
gnome-shell 3.22.1+2+g5a08886-1

mcComBat

Member

Registered: 2011-06-17

Posts: 7

Re: Display scaling with external monitors

Ok, after tinkering with this stuff for a bit, I've partially solved the problem,
I've set both of the settings above to their default values, and now Wayland seems to scale the desktop automatically.
Problem is, that some apps don't handle the dpi change well - chrome stays really large on my external monitors, and there are also other apps (Telegram-desktop for example).
Any ideas how to fix that?

Also, I still can't use both my internal HiDPI monitor with my external monitors with different scaling - when I open the lid of my laptop and the internal display goes on, the dpi scaling is set to a bigger value for all monitors, resulting in huge graphics on the externals.
Please help me solve this issue.

blowfish711

Member

Registered: 2014-01-27

Posts: 7

Re: Display scaling with external monitors

Bumping this because it's something I'm interested in as well.