HiDPI Issues in Windows 8.1 (Chrome, Spotify)

I recently bought a very nice Lenovo Yoga 2. The screen is incredible, I can not look at my old monitor any more, reading on it is a dream

However, enter the issues of HiDPI and windows scaling and I have a few issues. Internet Explorer loads fine, and other MS applications look good. However, Chrome looks blurry along with Spotify... I have already unselected the "Let me choose one scaling level for all my displays" However that makes Chrome and all other apps very small indeed on the 3200 x 1800 resolution.

So my current solution is to have Windows 8.1 scale everything and then disable the scaling in the program compatibility settings (right click the exe) but this means the tabs in Chrome are really really small.

I am looking for a solution where apps like Chrome and Spotify look as good as the other apps on my laptop. I realise this may be hacky for now, what does everyone else do?

Solution 1:

As @PeterT noted in the comments, the correct way to do this in chrome is using chrome://flags/#high-dpi-support (and to force GPU rendering if it doesn't happen automatically).

I just had a similar experience with a relative's HiDPI Sony VAIO.

It isn't that these are "experiments" in Chrome, as much as just the fact that it is easier to enable them only on machines that require/support them. It would be nice to have the support for these features autodetected, but that isn't always so easy given the wide variety of hardware (and, more importantly, the wide variety of drivers) that are currently in use on different platforms. I doubt that the Microsoft applications has it enabled by default either - I would guess that it was enabled by Lenovo when they installed Windows on the machine.

As far as Spotify goes, you are out of luck. Spotify does not have HiDPI support and does not seem to have any plans to release it any time soon. See these threads on the Spotify forum for more details.

• http://community.spotify.com/t5/Help-Desktop-Linux-Mac-and/Spotify-not-HiDPI/td-p/288054
• http://community.spotify.com/t5/Spotify-Ideas/Retina-MacBook-Pro/idi-p/88317

Solution 2:

Setting the flag via chrome://flags no longer works in the latest version of Chrome. Instead, you can set it via a registry key. Instructions to do it manually, or you can try this registry file (use at your own risk):

1. Open regedit.exe
2. Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google\Chrome
3. Create the "Profile" key if it does not already exist
4. Create a new DWORD value named "high-dpi-support" and give it a value of 1 (0x00000001)

That will enable the experimental HIDPI mode.

Now you need to disable Windows display scaling, since Chrome will handle it itself:

1. Find a Chrome shortcut on your desktop or toolbar
2. Right click and go to properties
3. Find the "Compatibility" tab
4. Check the "Disable display scaling on high DPI settings" box

Now you're ready to restart Chrome. Make sure you've killed all Chrome processes via Task Manager (they do not die when you close all windows) and start Chrome via your shortcut. It should work, with all the normal bugs of the experimental HIDPI mode (for example, dragging tabs between windows doesn't quite work the way it's supposed to).

Tested in Chrome 35.0.1916.114

Update: This appears to be broken in Chrome 36 (it constantly resets the registry setting to "2"). I could not get it to work except by switching to the Chrome 37 beta channel, where the same registry hack works (no other change needed).