articles/2025/Screen-scaling-with-xrandr.html


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<h2>Screen scaling with xrandr</h2>
<h3>2025-03-30</h3>
<h4>Changing screen scaling on my X220</h4>
<p>The Thinkpad X220 has a screen resolution of 1366x768 (16:9), which suits the size of the 13" screen, 
but sometimes you stumble on applications that have gui elements that are taller than the screen.</p>
<p>In Linux, it's possible to change the screen scaling to emulate a larger screen with xrandr.
It won't look as crisp as the real resolution, but might get you out of a bind.</p>
<p>This command will emulate a 1920x1080 (16:9) screen:</p>
<code>xrandr --output LVDS1 --panning 1920x1080 --scale 1.406x1.406</code>
<p>or 1600x900:</p>
<code>xrandr --output LVDS1 --panning 1600x900  --scale 1.171x1.172</code>
<p>To return to the original scaling, type:</p>
<code>xrandr --output LVDS1 --panning 1366x768 --scale 1x1</code>
<p>On the other hand , if you have for example a 1920x1080 (16:9) screen but would like to
scale down to 1600x900<br>(which might well be the case when I receive the new 1920x1080 IPS screen for my 14" T430)</p>
<code>xrandr --output LVDS1 --panning 1600x900  --scale 0.8333x0.8333</code>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>In XFCE4, you can also magnify the resolution in <br>
<b>Settings->Appearance->Settings->Window Scaling</b><br></p>
<p>you can also do this on the command line with</p>
<code>xfconf-query -c xsettings -p /Gdk/WindowScalingFactor -s SCALE</code>
<p>where SCALE is either 1 or 2</p>
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