4K Scaling, messed up UI and pages

Hi everyone.

I need help dealing with 4K resolution.

Everything is so tiny, I can't read anything or interact properly on 4K. The UI is too small. I just see ants (see picture)


Scaled display to 200% and everything looks as it should and nice.

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The problem:
If I run games full screen while having scale on, game's UI is messed and hard to interact or read in game.


So I change the game resolution to 1080, but when game changes the resolution, all my desktop windows/pages gets resized and messed up, some get smaller, some get maximized and I have to resize them all, it gets really annoying.
I think Windows 10 is trying to scale them down to 1080 and 200%?

Even if I set games resolution at 4K to avoid resizing issue, some games at launch starts at 720p before it changes to 4k and all my pages get messed up because of the scaling.

My PC can't run some games smoothly at 4K too so I need to use 1080.
And I don't want to set my desktop resolution to 1080, I like the crispness and the sharpness of the 4K.

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Anyone have any idea or software to help with this?
The only workaround is to set my scale to 100% before running the game and set it back to 200% after, which is annoying too.


Can't believe MS still can't figure how to make the UI convenient for 4k, btw I'm on 50" TV and can't see a thing, can't imagine how someone can use 4k on ~27" monitors.

Thanks in advance.

• Windows 10 22H2 Build 19045
• Nividia GTX 970 via HDMI @NATIve 3840x2160@60Hz

Maybe try 1920 x 1080 ?

margrave55 said:

Maybe try 1920 x 1080 ?

black said:

And I don't want to set my desktop resolution to 1080, I like the crispness and the sharpness of the 4K.

?
Sorry if my explanation of the problem wasn't good, let me know if you need any additional info.
I'd like to keep the 4k, it look much better.

Edit your game's shortcuts to, before the game runs and after it exits, make it automatically change the DPI scaling as needed. This can easily be done by making each game shortcut point to your own custom batch script that launches the appropriate commands.
GitHub - imniko/SetDPI
I tested it on my current setup... for me, it works.

As for changing the display resolution, yes, doing that can tend to mess up some of the alignments in certain programs/apps that you have open. It is one of multiple reasons why I generally try to avoid having to change resolution altogether. For those few situations when there simply is no other choice, I used to use a tool called QRes. But that one flaked out on me after I got new hardware so, I moved to this:
ChangeScreenResolution - Change your screen resolution from the command line in Windows

hdmi said:

Edit your game's shortcuts to, before the game runs and after it exits, make it automatically change the DPI scaling as needed. This can easily be done by making each game shortcut point to your own custom batch script that launches the appropriate commands.
GitHub - imniko/SetDPI
I tested it on my current setup... for me, it works.

As for changing the display resolution, yes, doing that can tend to mess up some of the alignments in certain programs/apps that you have open. It is one of multiple reasons why I generally try to avoid having to change resolution altogether. For those few situations when there simply is no other choice, I used to use a tool called QRes. But that one flaked out on me after I got new hardware so, I moved to this:
ChangeScreenResolution - Change your screen resolution from the command line in Windows

Thank you, I googled and already tried changing the DPI for each game, sadly, it didn't work.
I've no problem with changing desktop resolution, or the UI size (maybe in some games if runs at 4k)

The problem is when the game runs and changes the desktop resolution from 4k to 1080 with scale on.
Once exiting the game, desktop's pages and windows get resized from matching 1080 back to 4k then scaled.

But I gave it another try with your suggestion, it didn't work too and it broke my PC, when I tried to change the scale from setting, my desktop got all messed up and my icons got stretched across the screen and beyond as if I had 2 screens, overlapping each others, it became unusable and couldn't fix it, had to do system restore.
Thankfully I had one restore point 2 days ago.

Because MS thinks Windows 10 is so perfect to have automatic restore points.

Anyway, Thank you again for the help, any more suggestion ?

black said:

The problem is when the game runs and changes the desktop resolution from 4k to 1080 with scale on.
Once exiting the game, desktop's pages and windows get resized from matching 1080 back to 4k then scaled.

What happens if you use your own batchfile that changes resolution to 1080p, waits a few seconds, turns off the scaling and waits a few more seconds before it launches the game? When you exit the game, are you able to use a similar batchfile that switches the settings back to normal again? IMO if it became unusable, then likely this was because the game was launched too soon after the settings were changed. So, after each resolution change and also after each DPI change it takes a moment or two for Windows to complete the switch.

@pepanee
Wow! Thank you! That's actually an awesome tip I can make use of later
Luckily, the display setting is one right click away.
What I meant is a press on macro button for instant change to 100 scale without prompt or opening windows.
Probably can google those commands to get it work but I'll wait for more legit ideas, the scaling is bit wacky with some programs.