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Comments on How to reduce DPI of external monitor using xrandr

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How to reduce DPI of external monitor using xrandr

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Have

I have the DPI on my laptop set in .Xresources with Xft.dpi: 192. I am outputting to the external monitor with:

xrandr --output HDMI-2 --auto --rotate left --right-of eDP-1

Want

I want to decrease the DPI of the external monitor. Because the screen is bigger, everything gets blown up.

Tried

I tried using the --dpi option but it affects no change:

xrandr --output HDMI-2 --auto --rotate left --dpi 92 --right-of eDP-1
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3 comment threads

Maybe your output device is incorrect try using `xdpyinfo` to check what your are using. (1 comment)
I don't understand what you mean by "reduce the DPI". DPI is a physical characteristic of a monitor a... (4 comments)
Perhaps --auto overrides --dpi? > --auto For connected but disabled outputs, this will enabl... (2 comments)
I don't understand what you mean by "reduce the DPI". DPI is a physical characteristic of a monitor a...
deleted user wrote over 1 year ago

I don't understand what you mean by "reduce the DPI". DPI is a physical characteristic of a monitor and cannot be changed in software. Are you looking for a way to change the scaling of UI elements (fonts etc) on the second monitor?

According to the xrandr man page, the --dpi option (1) applies to the whole X screen rather than individual monitors, and (2) only affects the font scaling of legacy applications which don't support RandR. So I don't think this is going to be the solution if your goal is to change font scaling.

mcp‭ wrote over 1 year ago · edited over 1 year ago

Yes you are right, but despite this, the concept of software "dpi" exists through Xft.dpi and xrandr --dpi.

My main goal is UI scaling.

bgstack15‭ wrote over 1 year ago

Doesn't resolution*DPI=physical size (as seen by Xorg)? Wouldn't you need to modify the resolution down or up to match the desired DPI if different from the native value for the monitor?

mcp‭ wrote over 1 year ago

This is a good question. I'm not sure.