Gnome automatically scales x2 on a HiDPI Display (XPS 13)

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I have the issue that ubuntu gnome (17) always has the automatic scale factor 2 when using the native resolution (3200×1800). When I change the resolution (to 1920×1080 for example) it scales normally (factor 1). When I look at gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.interface scaling-factor it returns 0. In the gnome tweak tool it says scaling is set to 1. Except for the fact that it is obviously 2. Are there any other options in gnome to set the display scaling or are there hidden mechanisms that scale automatically when choosing a particular resolution?

If I change the scaling factor in the tweak tool to 2 and back to 1, everything scales normally except for the top bar and some notifications.
So changing the scaling from 2 to 1 does result in a lower scaling, but does not affect the top bar.

Please help me, this is really annoying.

Best Answer

A scaling-factor of 0 under org.gnome.desktop.interface means that the scaling factor should be automatically detected, which happens to be 2 in your setup.
The scaling factor setting in gnome-tweak-tool changes a different setting that only affects the scaling of gtk3 windows. To get everything to scale to 1, you need to change the scaling-factor under org.gnome.desktop.interface:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface scaling-factor 1

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Xrandr scale 2×2 for multi display (4K HiDPI and Full HD mix) – blurred output

I also have 4k monitor on my notebook. What I am typically doing is just setting 1920x1080 mode for 4k monitor and it looks perfect actually, exactly as 1080p monitor. Just do not scale or antialias, you need to find a way to just have 2x2 pixels.

Cannot enable HiDPI from Gnome Tweak Tool

Apparently it's been removed from Tweaks but not from dconf which is why you're still able to do it via terminal... Typical GNOME stuff.
Anyway, as of gnome 3.26, there's a new dconf key under org.gnome.mutter called experimental-features which is of type as (array of strings - it accepts multiple string values) and one particular value enables HiDpi support on Wayland (including fractional values):

• "scale-monitor-framebuffer" — makes mutter default to layout logical monitors
                                in a logical pixel coordinate space, while scaling
                                monitor framebuffers instead of window content, to
                                manage HiDPI monitors. Does not require a restart.

So per the above, fire up dconf-editor and add 'scale-monitor-framebuffer' to the list of experimental features under org.gnome.mutter:

For those who prefer the terminal, follow the instructions here (sure, replacing the values in that example: 'screen-cast', 'remote-desktop' with 'scale-monitor-framebuffer').
Restart your session and you should then be able to set the scaling factor from the control center
Settings > Devices > Displays > Scale:

Best Answer

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Xrandr scale 2×2 for multi display (4K HiDPI and Full HD mix) – blurred output

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