Allow GNOME fractional scaling below 100%

[ubname]

It should be possible to scale down the whole shell to less than 100%
e.g. 90% 85% etc.

thanks

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 17.10
Package: gnome-shell 3.26.1-0ubuntu3
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.13.0-16.19-generic 4.13.4
Uname: Linux 4.13.0-16-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.7-0ubuntu3
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Mon Oct 16 20:14:43 2017
DisplayManager: gdm3
GsettingsChanges:
 b'org.gnome.shell' b'favorite-apps' b"['org.gnome.Nautilus.desktop', 'firefox.desktop']"
 b'org.gnome.desktop.interface' b'gtk-im-module' b"'gtk-im-context-simple'"
InstallationDate: Installed on 2017-10-16 (0 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 17.10 "Artful Aardvark" - Beta amd64 (20171012)
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=it_IT.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gnome-shell
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

It is mostly possible in 17.10 already, except there is no nice GUI for the setting and icons in the dock and headerbars will refuse to scale down. Try:

  gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface text-scaling-factor 0.85

So the setting exists. We just lack a GUI for it in gnome-control-center.

[Jacob Ferrero (jacobferrero)]

I believe this is about display scale (in Display settings) - not about font. I'm also looking for a way to scale the display below 100%.

[praseodeveloper (praseodeveloper)]

Display scaling below 100% is very much required to run on lower resolution displays.
Text scaling is not enough for that.

The ubuntu dock and window borders appear chunky on 1366 X 768.

[adredz (red-adaya)]

I also think this is needed. I'm on focal fossa and everything is so big. I'd imagine it's good on WQHD and above screens but it sucks on my screen which is Fulll HD.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

As a workaround, and arguably better solution, do what I do:

  Gnome Tweaks > Fonts > Interface Text = size 10 or 9

[adredz (red-adaya)]

@Daniel van Vugt, it doesn't work on Gnome Shell.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

That's probably bug 1717453 :(

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Ironically this is how Xorg fractional scaling already works. So it's definitely possible but we have no GUI to configure it.

You can in theory configure it yourself using something like:

  xrandr --output OUTPUT --scale ...

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

It's probably best not to implement fractional scaling below 100% because it would have the same performance problems as Xorg fractional scaling already does.

Instead I recommend:

 1. Shrink your text, for example:

    gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface text-scaling-factor 0.75

 2. Shrink your dock, for example:

    gsettings set org.gnome.shell.extensions.dash-to-dock dash-max-icon-size 16

[Jymbob (james-scholes)]

Resurrecting this somewhat.

The solutions suggested above are fine if you only have one monitor, but immediately cause issues if you have more than one (and they're not similar in size and resolution).

Here, on two out of my three screens, everything is exactly as I want.
The third one is a little large. Rendering at .8 or .9 would be great. What I'd currently have to do is:

1. shrink text
2. shrink dock
3. increase fractional scaling of the other two screens

[James Lewis (james-fsck)]

I am not certain why fractional scaling below 100% would cause any different performance issues than fractional scaling above 100%, but it is certainly something that I have wanted for a long time.... sometimes the fact that it would cause some blurring as the image would be scaled to contain more pixels than the display... is not a problem.

Please do consider allowing this if it is possible, even if it is not directly exposed to the user on most distros, accessing it through gnome-tweaks or dconf would be fine.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Apparently it was partially implemented in GNOME 42 (Ubuntu 22.04):
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/commit/bfb7151c

1. Enable fractional scaling in Settings and set it to 100%.
2. Edit ~/.config/monitors.xml and change the scale value to 0.5
3. Log in again.

[James Lewis (james-fsck)]

I tried the suggestion in #13 to manually edit .config/monitors.xml without success, I do hope this can eventually be realised.

[Dark Dragon (darkdragon-001)]

@james-fsck you need to adapt the position values (x,y) as well to the scale as I outlined in the linked upstream issue: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/1465#note_1582649

[James Lewis (james-fsck)]

@darkdragon-001 by way of an update, I re-tried this on 24.04 (development) as of this date, using Gnome 45.3, on Wayland.... and it worked.

It's quite uncanny to see 2400x1600 rendered on a 2160x1440 screen, but it worked.... with the exception of a couple of apps that were blew up spectacularly, including OBS, and Slack... otherwise... everything else worked fine, and at the scaling factor above (90%), things seemed quite usable... it looked a little like an old CRT that was being pushed a little hard, but for certain applications this could be awesome.

I wish the UI in gnome would offer the ability to be more granular than just 25% increments, and also go below 100%, perhaps with a warning, or from within Gnome Tweaks.