Introduction

Windows 10 Application Scaling tends to work most of the time, but if you have an older app or multiple screens with differing resolutions then oh boy – you can have some whackyscaling effects.

Here’s me writing this post with a completely enormous Word 2016 on top.

This is a completely untouched screen crab.  To be fair, this is with Word spread across two differing sized resolution monitors but even so!

Taking another example for a moment, you can see that the current version of Open Live Writer which I use to do the first edit of my posts has some issues.

Here half the menu is hidden but scaling issues can cause all kinds of issues.  Luckily there are a couple of easy to apply fixes.

Fixing Application Scaling Issues Automatically

The good news is that we can fix these issues easily by applying scaling settings either automatically or manually.

1. Click the Start Button then Settings –>System –>Display

2. Select Advanced Scaling Settings.

3. Click the button for [Let Windows try to fix apps so they’re not blurry].

4. Close the desktop app that has the issues and then re-open it.

If this hasn’t fixed your issue continue with a manual fix.

Fixing Application Scaling Issues Manually

So the automatic fix didn’t work huh?  Oh well never mind, manually fixing an app’s scaling issues is pretty easy as well.

This is usually required for older applications so don’t feel too bad.

The Windows Compatibility Mode has been around in Windows for a long time and whilst it doesn’t fix everything, being able to tell an old app it’s running in Windows XP or Windows 95 or forcing a certain screen type can help an old app live on in the new age.  But we’re interested in fixing the scaling issues so let’s look at that.

1. Open the application you’re having issues with.  I will launch the Open Live Writer App as that is giving me issues.

2. Right click on the app icon in the task bar.

3. Now right click on the app icon in the menu, and then left click on the properties menu option.

4. Click on the compatibility tab.

5. Now click on the [Change DPI Settings] button.

6. The required changes will differ for each application but below are the settings that worked for Open Live Writer and brought those shy menus back into view.

And there you have it.  I found I had to log out and back in for the changes to take affect but I’m aware that doesn’t always seem to be the case.

Hope that helps with your old application scaling issues.