Dual monitors on Windows - How do I set a different DPI or text size on each monitor?

Solution 1:

DPI settings affect the entire desktop, regardless of number or arrangement of monitors. You cannot have two different DPI settings on two monitors.

Update:

This is untrue as of Windows 8.1, which adds many DPI scaling enhancements, including per-display DPI settings. Although some may not find the implementation offers enough control.

Solution 2:

A bit of a hack is:

If you are always using a certain application on one screen, you can set that application to ignore DPI settings. For example, I have Visual Studio on my big monitor set to ignore DPI (100%). Everything else on my retina laptop monitor is at 145%.

The setting "Disable display scaling on high DPI settings" is under compatibility under the properties menu of the application exe.

Solution 3:

It finally does work in Windows 10 although many apps still would not scale correctly. It works almost as good as on OSX.

For higher DPI 1st monitor (200% scale)

For lower DPI 2nd monitor (100% scale)

It is important NOT to use following scaling (it should be set to 100%). By default using MacBook retina driver pack it would be set to 150/200%.