How to Enable Fractional Scaling in Ubuntu 19.10 Eoan

gnome shell

This quick tutorial shows how to enable the fractional scaling in Ubuntu 19.10 for both default X and wayland sessions.

The Display settings only offer two scaling values (100% and 200%) by default. For HiDPI displays, you may want fractional scaling values, like 125% or 150%, and here’s how to do the job.

1.) Open Ubuntu Software, search for and install dconf editor.

2.) Launch dconf editor and navigate to org -> gnome -> mutter.

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There find out and click to go to settings for ‘experimental-features‘. Then do:

  • Turn off ‘Use default value‘.
  • Set Custom value to [‘x11-randr-fractional-scaling’] for default X session.
  • For wayland session, set the value to [‘scale-monitor-framebuffer’]

NOTE: Fractional scaling is an experimental feature, it may have bugs. And It might reduce performance on X11.

For those familiar with Linux commands, do the job via single command:

For default X11 session, open terminal and run command:

gsettings set org.gnome.mutter experimental-features "['x11-randr-fractional-scaling']"

For wayland session, run command:

gsettings set org.gnome.mutter experimental-features "['scale-monitor-framebuffer']"

To undo the change, run command:

gsettings reset org.gnome.mutter experimental-features