How to scale up Qubes resolution on a high resolution display?

User Support
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I have a laptop with a 3840x2400 display and Qubes is making everything look tiny. I tried scaling everything up by going to Appearance > Settings > Window Scaling and then setting it from 1x to 2x. This sorta works, except for any Qube Manager windows and the colorful border around VM windows. The top bar of that colorful window remains the exact same height cutting off the window title. The other problem with this approach is that VM windows don’t scale by default, only dom0 windows.

I tried adjusting DPI under Appearance > DPI > Custom DPI setting, but that had worse results.

The only thing I found that worked was setting the resolution to something lower under Display > General > Resolution, such as from 3840x2400 to 2560x1600. While things still look smooth, they don’t look as smooth as when I just increased the Window Scaling to 2x.

Is there some better way of scaling things up by 1.5x or 2x, while maintaining the 3840x2400 resolution?

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welcome @swandive . Did you try using cvt and xrandr ?

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This doesn’t help. I’ve tried several ways to try and get this working, but only with limited success.

I tried setting the display to 3840x2400, which is my maximum display resolution as I have an OLED 4k display. From there I set GDK WindowScalingFactor to 2, which worked for any dom0 windows, but not the windows of any of the qubes. That means, I have to go into every single VM, go to the xfce4 settings and change the property, which is annoying. To make it worse, I have to install xfce4-settings for each of the minimal VMs as they otherwise don’t support it and I have to launch the xfsettingsd daemon with xfsettingsd --daemon at startup, else the settings don’t take effect. For testing I just changed it from the terminal:

xfconf-query -c xsettings -p /Gdk/WindowScalingFactor -s 2

and then synced it

xfsettingsd --sync

If I didn’t kept the sync running any future windows would be scaled right back to 1.

To make matters worse, some programs like KeePassXC, VeraCrypt, and qBittorrent were completely unaffected by the change. Firefox, Mullvad, Tor Browser, etc all scaled up just fine, but some of the programs were still tiny and couldn’t be scaled up.

Then there is the issue with the Qube Manager windows which don’t scale at all. Same applies to the Qubes window border around all VM windows, so the text of the top bar, as mentioned, gets cut off half way and the symbols to close, minimize, etc are still tiny as well making it difficult to click on them.

From what I can gather, Qubes OS simply does not have support for 4K displays, at least not on Laptops. So it’s either set it to 3840x2400 and squint really hard to make out what’s happening on the display, settle in the middle setting it to 2560x1600 (still small, but somewhat usable), or set it to 1920x1200 and get a normal and usable display resolution. Unfortunately, setting it to 1920x1200 beats the entire point of spending the extra money on a 4K OLED display.

I’m an artist and wanted to use this workstation specifically for art and I was hoping to use Qubes for it, but it seems like Qubes does not support 4K displays yet. Unless I’m missing something crucial here, it should really be noted somewhere in the docs that it doesn’t have support for those kind of displays.

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Qubes OS supports 4K display

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Maybe this helps Best practice: Working with different screen resolution (FHD and 4K)

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Maybe if you have an external monitor that scales just right, but having a Laptop with a 4K display isn’t usable at all, so I can’t say it supports it in a meaningful way as everything is tiny and the workarounds are less than ideal. So I can’t claim it supports it the way other OS do.

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Yeah I was settling on a 2560x1600 as a middle ground, but everything is still small. Better than 3840x2400, but I bought a laptop with a 3840 4K OLED display to use it, otherwise I would’ve gone with a cheaper option. I do intend on using the 4K display, but it seems like there are only some workarounds that “sort of” work, but not entirely. I have to squint and zoom in whenever I use the Qubes Manager for example. Simply not usable for my purposes and it seems like there is no native support for proper scaling.

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I would suggest to add a note to the Qubes OS hardware requirements.

Qubes OS performs well with Full HD (FHD) displays. It also supports dual and triple monitor configurations effectively. Larger screens, such as 27-inch or greater with QHD resolution (2560x1440), function properly without the need for DPI adjustments.

However, 4K displays (e.g., 3840x2160) typically require manual DPI scaling to ensure proper usability. Configuring DPI settings for 4K screens can be inconvenient and complex, especially when combined with other display resolutions, due to the way Qubes OS manages DPI across different virtual machines (qubes). This may lead to usability issues if not properly configured.

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I think the entry needs to concentrate on high pixel density / ppi / hidpi displays only.

I am writing this on a 4K monitor and it required zero adjustments, mostly because it’s 43", so the default dpi is just perfect.

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What about -
“Some 4K displays, particularly those with high pixel density, will require manual DPI scaling…”

I never presume to speak for the Qubes team.
When I comment in the Forum I speak for myself.

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Essentially this. I can imagine it working just fine with a 4K monitor with dimensions that scale accordingly. Any high density displays, like 4K+ OLED displays on laptops end up not scaling properly.

I did manage to get the Qubes window borders/top bar to scale up by using the Default theme under Window Manager > Style. Default xhdpi theme is also functional.

The only two problems remaining are the Qubes windows, like the Qubes Manager, and certain applications like qBittorrent and KeePassXC that won’t scale.