How to change DPI, not just for fonts (make everything bigger)

jancellor · 2013-01-09 21:06:44

Hello

I would like to make everything bigger. Fonts, panels, menus, buttons, text boxes, title bars, etc.

Is this possible? If not, that would mean that the size of, say, an OK button in Leafpad is specified as a certain number of physical pixels, right?

If it is possible, should this be an X server setting or an Xfce one? If it is X, can you suggest something anyway, or point me at the right forum?

I don't know if this is the right approach but I have tried "xrandr --dpi 120 -s 1366x768" but this does not do anything (including no output in the terminal). Doing "xrandr -s 1024x768" (ie without using "--dpi 120") does successfully do something.

Help! Surely there is a solution. Xfce is unusable without the ability to "zoom" the whole desktop.

I am running Xubuntu 12.10 in a Windows 7 VirtualBox with a 1366x768 13-inch screen.

(I already posted here http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2102980, is that bad? I wasn't sure if it was Xfce specific.)

Many thanks

James

ToZ · 2013-01-10 01:04:43

How about Settings Manager -> Appearance -> Fonts Tab -> DPI setting?

jancellor · 2013-01-10 21:31:54

ToZ wrote:

How about Settings Manager -> Appearance -> Fonts Tab -> DPI setting?

No, this just changes the font size.

Actually, if the text in, say, a button happens to too big to fit into the button, the button expands so that it fits. But this is very different from the scaling the whole UI.

wilker · 2013-01-11 02:38:31

jancellor wrote:

ToZ wrote:
How about Settings Manager -> Appearance -> Fonts Tab -> DPI setting?
No, this just changes the font size.
Actually, if the text in, say, a button happens to too big to fit into the button, the button expands so that it fits. But this is very different from the scaling the whole UI.

hi,

what result exactly do you expect? the text to not fit in the buttons? apparently it scales the windows here, except for the window decoration size:

regards

jancellor · 2013-01-11 19:54:33

wilker wrote:

what result exactly do you expect? the text to not fit in the buttons? apparently it scales the windows here, except for the window decoration size:

No, it does not scale the window. Do you not notice the small checkboxes, icons, and otherwise badly proportioned layout in your screenshot?

The text gets bigger, and as a side effect the buttons get bigger. But even this is only if you make the font so big that it would otherwise not fit in the button. And if you make the font smaller, the button (height) does not change.

For a font DPI setting, this is exactly what I expect.

jancellor · 2013-01-11 20:15:26

There seem to be more people asking the same question for GNOME. I can't link to any definitive resource, but everything I have found says:

No, it is not possible to set the DPI and hence scale everything up or down.

I'm guessing it is the same for Xfce. Hope this helps anyone who comes looking.

Nick · 2013-01-11 22:25:26

lower your screen resolution

Magnus · 2013-01-12 01:25:10

There should be a way to scale everything up as retina displays become more prominent, though.

wilker · 2013-01-12 11:01:34

Magnus wrote:

There should be a way to scale everything up as retina displays become more prominent, though.

feel free to develop that, xfce is open source smile

narmod · 2013-01-13 01:17:18

I've been wondering how this is going to work in the near future, when higher resolutions are more and more common place, like 4K or that crazy 8K from Sharp. I think that the *freedesktop* people needs to come up with an standard first (if there isn't one already), before Desktop Environments start implementing anything. Something similar to how Android manages vastly disparate screen sizes and pixel densities, or something similar.

trennor · 2014-03-20 00:25:46

My icons on applications are far too small: for example, the window closing x on firefox is often missed and i have to make 3 or 4 frustrating attempts to close them because the mouse pointer misses them. Application bars and icons are similarly too small. I can understand devs are perhaps attempting to save screen real estate for important stuff like a webpage or graphics, but but I'd like my icons to be a bit bigger than they are. Task Bar icons are fine for size; I've no quarrel with them. I'm no geek or developer so don't ask me to develop anything; beyond my realm. Double size would be just fine for me; why are they so tiny?!

Sideburns · 2014-03-20 18:59:33

Go into Settings->Emerald Theme Manager, select the theme you're using and edit it. You can make the title bar bigger, if you need, and adjust the size of the buttons on it. I haven't played around with it, so I don't know if the changes take effect right away, or if you have to log out and back in to have everything change, but you should be able to see the difference inside Emerald before you exit.

Magnus · 2014-03-21 20:57:49

Currently no Linux desktop works with very high resolutions, though Gnome 3.12 which will come out in a couple of weeks will have some support. Forget about DPI scaling in Xfce though.

sixsixfive · 2014-03-23 09:10:54

Magnus wrote:

Currently no Linux desktop works with very high resolutions

Nah, not really running KDE 4.12 on my TV @220dpi and it works with the most applications i tried(except chrome based ones) https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issu … ?id=352955

@Thread

you could try android-x86 because it's optimized for high dpi http://www.android-x86.org (tried this on my TV and I would use it if sound over HDMI would work)

there is also tizen in the future

teetron · 2017-07-13 12:45:48

narmod wrote:

I've been wondering how this is going to work in the near future, when higher resolutions are more and more common place, like 4K or that crazy 8K from Sharp.

Well, 4 years later -- and still zero effective support for high DPI -- and you have your answer: Desktop Linux is dying, and XFCE is already dead.

sixsixfive · 2017-07-13 14:20:48

teetron wrote:

Well, 4 years later -- and still zero effective support for high DPI -- and you have your answer: Desktop Linux is dying, and XFCE is already dead.

bullsh*t, both Qt5 and GTK3 fully support hdpi - so hidpi is already available on MATE, KDE, LXQt, Budgie, Deepin, GNOME, Enlightenment and Cinnamon etc.

The only desktop that still has issues here is Xfce due its dependency on GTK2 - however the only component thats still missing GTK3-support is thunar and that filemanager is an unstable piece of **** so you could use Caja, nemo, dolphin and many others instead.

also there exist some unit-doubled GTK2-themes that will give you fake-hidpi for GTK2...

ToZ · 2017-07-15 17:46:46

I just built Xfce from git (where most of the components have been migrated to GTK 3) in a VM on my surface pro to see how the hidpi looks. I've set GDK scaling to 2:

As sixsixfive has noted, the GTK2 apps (thunar in the image) does not scale. All the other items seem to scale well and the touch screen works fine. I'm using the xhdpi xfwm4 theme and the greybird gtk2/3 appearance theme.

The thunar migration is about 50% done and xfwm4 migration has begun. When they are complete, hidpi support should be much better.

The current status of the GTK3 migration can be found here.

To see the state of ongoing Xfce development work, you can always have a look at the git source tree.

sixsixfive · 2017-07-31 15:52:32

Also just to show a fake HIDPI example

you can see thunar (doubled GTK2 fake HiDPI theme) and Pluma(GTK3)

gtk2 font dpi size is 192px and the icon sizes are doubled eg:

xfconf-query -c xsettings -p /Gtk/IconSizes -s "gtk-menu=32,32:gtk-small-toolbar=48,48:gtk-large-toolbar=48,48:gtk-dnd=96,96:gtk-button=48,48:gtk-dialog=96,96:gtk-panel=48,48:panel-applications-menu=48,48:panel-tasklist-menu=64,64:panel-menu=48,48:panel-directory-menu=48,48:panel-launcher-menu=48,48:panel-window-menu=48,48:panel-menu-bar=48,48:ev-icon-size-annot-window=32,32:webkit-media-button-size=48,48"

Last edited by sixsixfive (2017-07-31 15:56:00)

linuxo · 2019-11-20 15:24:37

Hi!
The scaling works great for some programs but not for the 2 programs that I'm using the most: Libre Office and VLC.
Changing the font doesn't do anything on the appearance of the 2 programs.

Do you have the same issue?
Thanks a lot!

ToZ · 2019-11-20 18:08:37

linuxo wrote:

Hi!
The scaling works great for some programs but not for the 2 programs that I'm using the most: Libre Office and VLC.
Changing the font doesn't do anything on the appearance of the 2 programs.
Do you have the same issue?
Thanks a lot!

Hello and welcome.

Which distro are you using?
Which version of Xfce are you using? (4.14 supports 2x display scaling).

How are setting up your display scaling?
For me, changing the font DPI is sufficient to change both of those programs.

jimav · 2023-07-25 00:33:01

For anyone looking here in 2023 with xfce4 (e.g. Xubuntu 22.04):

Settings->Appearance->Settings now has a "Window Scaling" option to scale the entire UI 2x,
which does what the OP asked for lo those many years ago.

However the panel can get very confused so that the whisker menu no longer works (or is located somewhere other than where it appears). You can get to settings via (desktop)->RightClick->Applications->Settings.

If 'Applications' doesn't appear in your desktop->RightClick menu, enable it at desktop->RightClick->Desktop Settings.

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#1 2013-01-09 21:06:44

How to change DPI, not just for fonts (make everything bigger)

#2 2013-01-10 01:04:43

Re: How to change DPI, not just for fonts (make everything bigger)

#3 2013-01-10 21:31:54

Re: How to change DPI, not just for fonts (make everything bigger)

#4 2013-01-11 02:38:31

Re: How to change DPI, not just for fonts (make everything bigger)

#5 2013-01-11 19:54:33

Re: How to change DPI, not just for fonts (make everything bigger)

#6 2013-01-11 20:15:26

Re: How to change DPI, not just for fonts (make everything bigger)

#7 2013-01-11 22:25:26

Re: How to change DPI, not just for fonts (make everything bigger)

#8 2013-01-12 01:25:10

Re: How to change DPI, not just for fonts (make everything bigger)

#9 2013-01-12 11:01:34

Re: How to change DPI, not just for fonts (make everything bigger)

#10 2013-01-13 01:17:18

Re: How to change DPI, not just for fonts (make everything bigger)

#11 2014-03-20 00:25:46

Re: How to change DPI, not just for fonts (make everything bigger)

#12 2014-03-20 18:59:33

Re: How to change DPI, not just for fonts (make everything bigger)

#13 2014-03-21 20:57:49

Re: How to change DPI, not just for fonts (make everything bigger)

#14 2014-03-23 09:10:54

Re: How to change DPI, not just for fonts (make everything bigger)

#15 2017-07-13 12:45:48

Re: How to change DPI, not just for fonts (make everything bigger)

#16 2017-07-13 14:20:48

Re: How to change DPI, not just for fonts (make everything bigger)

#17 2017-07-15 17:46:46

Re: How to change DPI, not just for fonts (make everything bigger)

#18 2017-07-31 15:52:32

Re: How to change DPI, not just for fonts (make everything bigger)

#19 2019-11-20 15:24:37

Re: How to change DPI, not just for fonts (make everything bigger)

#20 2019-11-20 18:08:37

Re: How to change DPI, not just for fonts (make everything bigger)

#21 2023-07-25 00:33:01

Re: How to change DPI, not just for fonts (make everything bigger)

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