Font is blurry due to Visual Studio not supporting mixed mode dpi / multi-display DPI awareness / changing DPI scaling without logging out
VS should support mixed mode dpi. Now it appears blurry when dragged from primary to secondary screen when they have different DPIs.
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Visual Studio is still using an amalgamation of Windows forms (.NET), WPF, Win32 (GDI) and HTML frameworks, several of which embed windows in each other. We are working with the Windows team to determine when VS and its ecosystem can support mixed display DPI modes.
The problem is only the system fonts for the menus, tabs and trees (solution explorer). All of the actual text editing looks fine. And it's highly variable if and when this happens between multiple machines with mixed dpi. Some of them will do it on the low resolution screen, others won't.
Can you share a screenshot of what you're seeing? It sounds different from what the report is on this item.
I had to take a photo because a screen shot looks fine because that's copying the actual pixels.
Note how some of the text is chopped off top and bottom on the letters. It's like the kerning is messed up or something. Meanwhile the coded editor is fine. Not great, but fine.
I got the exact same problem, Visual Studio IDE is blurry (random part) but when I move the mouse on the blurry part, it become correct. Also, taking snapshot is working properly and no blurry text in the snapshot.
very annoying. It is not exactly the issue mentionned in this thread but similar to the one posted above with picture of the ide.
My config.:
DPI: 100% (unchanged)
Win7 Pro sp1
Thank you for reporting this issue to us. We have changed the title to better describe the problem so others can find and engage with it
This has been fixed in SQL Management Studio 2017.1.
I hope the fix is coming to VS 2017 soon. I can't use VS on the second monitor because of the blurry fonts.
I have the same problem.. Looking for a solution..
,I have the same problem.. looking for a solution..
Thank you for your feedback.
We're continuing to investigate the work needed to add this feature to Visual Studio. We want to make sure you're aware that we're not going to be addressing this in the near term. We're continuing to work with our partners to make sure we get the experience right, as updating a large application like Visual Studio is going to be complicated, as many components, including things like extensions, will need to make changes to address fundamental assumptions in the UI.
Please feel free to vote-up the feature request on User Voice. https://visualstudio.uservoice.com/forums/121579-visual-studio-ide/suggestions/5429060-make-visual-studio-per-monitor-multi-monitor-dpi-a
Thank you!
Well, as they say in the movie industry the solution is easy you need to "re-imagine" the UI or basically you need to re-write it from scratch in a consistent modern way even if it breaks something. Do it once and live happily ever after.
Note that the uservoice issue was edited by MSFT to say that the issue is now tracked at https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/idea/351305/_.html .
Without this support, it is also painful to move the main window between screens. Like first reporter, my main display is a 4k monitor. It's often what I need to test graphical based applications on. So the IDE gets moved to secondary screens. However, after the move it tends to want to size itself like it was on the original screen, meaning half the screen remains on the original screen (layout is actually 3 screens, two 1920x1080 monitors above one 4k monitor). Moving it actually ends up with the app covering all of the top monitors and half the 4k monitor, and then it's resize the window fun. With the window crossing screen boundaries, the window size code seems to sometimes rebound so start shrinking the window and you end up with a window that spans top to bottom the entire displays (so all 3 of my monitors have the IDE window over it). And of course on secondary screens, the text is more blurry.
So besides font, this affects window sizing too.
I've got a new Surface Pro 4 for work this week, and I was wondering if this would be an issue. It is. How has this not been addressed already?
This only became visible to me when I updated to Windows 10. Win 7 was not having this problem.
2 of my monitors are 1920*1080, the other two are 1080*1920. (2x display port, 1x USB-VGA, 1x laptop display) The laptop display is set to 125% scaling and was capable of 4K but I dialed that down to HD as too many programs look terrible with it.
Turning that scaling down to 100% to match the others doesn't seem to make an appreciable difference.
If users cant read the application, I dont see how this can be "under consideration". I've had bugs here closed as they would be counter to "accessibility" - there is no reason to create further accessibility problems, or at least not fix them at the same priority as an ADA related item would be.
I have the Windows global scaling at 125%. I had this problem for a while, solved it by rebooting. But since a month-or-so ago, VS looks always blurry, even without the second monitor plugged in. Maybe because of an update? Tried reinstalling, didn't work. Now it's just inusable :(
Looks like this issue is going to be addressed in Visual Studio 2019. In Preview 1 you can see a new (yet disabled) preview feature:
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Thanks Shannon, this suggestion did help, partially.
Before, when using 125% on my small hi-res laptop, and 100% on my large hi-res external monitor, on both displays VSCode looked very bad, not only in the menu areas, but also in the main code window.
After trying Shannon's suggestion, VSCode's code window is about 80% crisper. Now, however, there are two new problems: the content windows (not menu areas) of Chrome and other similar applications are now about as blurry as the content window of VSCode; also all text is too small to read on my laptop.
But for working at my desk at least, it's a big improvement.
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I set my external monitor to be the primary and that helped a bit. The text was hurting my eyes pretty bad. It still doesn't look perfectly crisp, but this did work a lot better for me.
Seems like a pretty big oversight from the testing team. Most developers use two monitors, especially when having to work on the company laptop.
Thanks, Viacheslav! I tried a bunch of things, even bought a dock that supported higher resolutions because the resolution of my work laptop (2560 x 1440). My eyes were really bothering me from what at first seems like a minor problem, but really adds up after time. Changing the external monitor to primary really worked well for me! until they fix visual studio I have a solution that will save my eyes!
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It doesn't actually work. The result is: the windows will keep 200% scaling on 2nd monitor(100% scale setting in windows), which looks extremely big.
It works for my setup(External monitor = 100%, Laptop monitor = 125%)too. Thanks. MSSQL has own settings for Compatibility too.
this works for me, I am using a laptop and another 24" monitor, previously it was quite blur on the big monitor with Visual Studio 2015's build output window, when I added that registry key and restarted the VS2015, it much improved for that output window and other menu item text.
This should only be acceptible for people with monitors that have similar DPIs. It won’t work for one old (e.g., 1080p) and one HiDPI (e.g., 4K) monitor.
This solution worked perfectly for me. I was going crazy trying other solutions to no avail. Thanks!
It's not a solution, but it is a workaround, that fixes the burriness for me!
It does not make VS High DPI compatible though, as it just ignores the scaling setting for each monitor. (Mine are set to 125% laptop and 100% main monitor, but this workaround seems to force the same scaling to both 125%)
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At least they started to implement that feature.
You could send feedback about your issues to be sure they get recognized and fixed by the VS team.
Just tried it, looks much better so far. C++ Project property dialog mishbehaves when moving between screens with different DPI, though.
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This doesn't address the blurriness and is not the best solution. The solution is to implement the updates made to the Windows 10 Fall Creator Edition update into visual studio. The update allows Win32 user interfaces to pragmatically respond to dpi changes.
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This is not a solution. Please move it to be a comment on the OP’s post.
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Doesn’t VS already say that it’s not multi-monitor DPI aware? Does this actually change anything?
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This isn’t a solution. Please repost it as a comment on the issue itself.
