Windows – How to change the default system dpi

dpiwindows 7

I have a 15.4" work laptop with 1680×1050 native resolution that came with Vista. After re-installing it with 7 a few days ago I noticed that the DPI setting in Control Panel -> Appearance and Personalization was not on 100 % but on 125 % (or 150 %, I don't remember). Apparently Windows decided that with 100 % on that screen text would be too small and made 125 % the system default.

I changed it to 100 % for my account, but the system default is still 125 %. The login screen is still on 125 % (not really a problem), but more annoying the msi installation packages created with Visual Studio 2010 are using the system default and look weird.

Is there a way to change the system default dpi setting?

Best Answer

Check out HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Hardware Profiles\Current\Software\Fonts\ in the registry.

It will/should have a key named "LogPixels" (type REG_DWORD), with the default DPI as it's data. I.E.: set it to (decimal) 96 for 96DPI, which is "100%".

If you change it there in the registry, you'll need to reboot to have it take effect.

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And remember that the two systems display fonts quite differently. For best cross-platform results, stick with 11-point helvetica. Won't alter the need for a change in zoom, necessarily, but will ensure that your careful pagination in one isn't totally destroyed in another.

Windows – Avoid Blurry texts when having 150% of normal DPI (windows 8.1)

Chrome has been lacking support for DirectWrite to render fonts on Windows. The issue you are describing is what happens not only on high DPI settings but also on normal (100%) settings.

There is a long and old thread on the Chromium issues website: https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=25541

The developers said they already enable it on Chrome Canary builds but there is no timetable on when the regular version of Chrome will support it.

You can enable DirectWrite launching the latest Chrome Canary build with the following parameters:

# To enable DirectWrite:
--enable-direct-write --no-sandbox

# To enable DirectWrite and sub-pixel font scaling:
--enable-direct-write --no-sandbox --enable-experimental-web-platform-features

The above parameters were listed by one of the developers in the same thread. The post link is https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=25541#c61

Be warned the by disabling the sandbox feature you are compromising one of Chrome's security features.

Opera, which uses Webkit, has the same problem as Chrome.

Best Answer

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