I work on a Windows 10 laptop, using Remote Desktop into another Windows 10 machine elsewhere.
What I do on my local machine (personal stuff: email, browsing, Excel) and on the remote machine (work stuff: Visual Studio development, various internal applications) have very different needs in terms of ideal display scale.
By "scale" I'm referring to Settings -> System -> Display -> Scale and layout -> Change the size of text, apps, and other items.
For my personal machine, the best display scale is the Windows 10 default of 125%, but for the work machine, the best display scale is 100%.
Unfortunately, Remote Desktop automatically uses the client scale to determine the remote scale. If the client is at 125%, the remote machine comes in at 125%. If I want 100% on the remote machine, I have to first set my local machine to 100%.
Is there any way to unlink these two so they can be independent? Config setting? Registry setting? Anything?
I found a solution for this exact problem but it only applied to 2012 server. Looking for one that works on Windows 10. Did a lot of searching, apologies if this is a duplicate and I missed it.
And because this is connecting to a work machine at the office, I don't have the option of using a different remote client, it has to be RDC.
Clarification added later: the apps I run on the remote machine are all written for a minimum of 1920 X 1080, so with my laptop being also 1920 X 1080 I cannot run the remote session in anything less than full screen. Also I live in that environment for hours and so need Windows keys (like Alt-Tab) to work. Hence – must be full screen. I realize that if I opened the remote session in a smaller resolution, the scaling would be 100% irrespective of the scaling on the client, but – not an option.
Best Answer
I found the best solution to a similar (but opposite?) issue was to use the UWP Remote Desktop app (via MS Store). It still uses the same RDP protocol, so should be able to connect to any machine the classic Remote Desktop client can.
Within the connection-specific settings, you have the option to specify an exact resolution and DPI scaling - the latter is not possible with the classic Remote Desktop client:
If you specify a fixed size, the UWP Remote Desktop app will instead stretch the display locally if you enter full screen mode. This is controllable via an app-global setting: