MATLAB scaling issue on high-resolution (high DPI) displays in Linux environments

Hi,

it seems to be generally known that Matlab has problems to scale appropriately on high DPI screens. There exist workarounds for Windows (<http://se.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/153254-matlab-scaling-issue-on-high-resolution-high-dpi-displays#answer_170792)>, but none for Linux. With the current scale it is almost impossible to read anything on the window. Increasing the font size is one possibility; however, it is not increasing the other menu options.

Is there even a plan to fix this design flaw in Matlab for Linux?

[Sanjana Ramakrishnan]

I work for MathWorks and I have forwarded this feedback to the appropriate product team. The development team is already aware of this issue and they may consider addressing it in a future release of MATLAB.

[Sanjana Ramakrishnan]

As a workaround, you can try the following approaches

(a)You can switch the high DPI monitor to a lower screen resolutions of 1920x1080 or as preferred. Follow the steps below to change the screen resolution:

1. Go to the OS Display control setting window

2. Click on the "Display" tab. A slider menu with the title "Scale for menu and title bars:" should be set to either 0.5 or 1. Click Apply.

3. Click on the "Reduce Resolution" tab and set it to 1920 x 1080 (16:9). Click Apply.

(b) You can connect a lower resolution monitor.

[Luca Berardocco]

I am using this little script to make everything work fine.

Is not that clean, but it works and is fully automated.

 % Code for OpenSUSE Leap 42.2
#set scaling to x1.0 to remove the zoom used in HDPI screens
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface scaling-factor 1
#Used in ubuntu machines
#gsettings set com.ubuntu.user-interface scale-factor "{'HDMI1': 8, 'eDP1': 8}"
#applying full HD resolution
xrandr -s 1920x1080
# call your program
/path_to_matlab_executable/matlab
#wait for the process to terminate
wait
#now coming back to the original screen resolution and scaling
# set scaling to x2.0
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface scaling-factor 2
#same as before
#gsettings set com.ubuntu.user-interface scale-factor "{'HDMI1': 8, 'eDP1': 16}"
#back to original resolution
xrandr -s 3840x2160

I replaced the alias for the MATLAB executable with this one that takes care of modifying resolution and scaling and brings everything back when MATLAB is closed.

[Paolo Mesiano]

Hi,

I'm using the code you provided and it works perfectly. Only thing is that when I close Matlab it switches back to the original resolution but without the 2x rescaling. So I end up with the proper resolution but very tiny text. Any suggestion about how to solve it?

Thanks.

[Mr. Mas]

I'm using Centos7 with Gnome. (I don't think I ever saw this issue using KDE but have recently switched to Gnome.) I am using a VNC server. I set the scaling to 1, reduced my resolution to 1024x768, then ran Matlab, quit, and set my resolution to 1920x1080. The fonts in the Editor, Command Window, and Command History were fine, but all the other fonts were large. I then used the autoscale feature of Windows (same if running a VNC viewer from on CentOS) to resize my window. Finally, I returned the scaling factor back to 1. Now things look good.

Answer 1

[Dr Noob]

Starting 2017b, Matlab supports high DPI display:

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/406956-does-matlab-support-high-dpi-screens-on-linux#answer_325831