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How to Enable Fractional Scaling in Ubuntu 19.10 Eoan

Last updated: October 15, 2019

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.

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
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    13 responses to How to Enable Fractional Scaling in Ubuntu 19.10 Eoan

    1. Brett November 1, 2019 at 1:47 am

      This doesn’t work on my machine. When I click any of the fractional scaling options, The apply button dissapears and it tells me that The graphics option is not available on my hardware. (using Nvidia proprietary 435)

    2. Marco November 19, 2019 at 3:16 pm

      This doesn’t work on my machine either.


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

      The extra buttons (125%, …) appear but scaling does not change when they are pressed.

      Using:
      – Newly freshly installed Ubuntu 19.10
      – NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060

    3. Udo November 22, 2019 at 5:56 pm

      Does not work on Fedora 31.
      Same old 100% 200% etc menu appears.

    4. Alfredo November 30, 2019 at 6:40 am

      Thanks a lot. Solved my problem on a Lenovo Flex 14.

    5. mrvco December 16, 2019 at 3:25 am

      I can change from 100% to 125%, but I’m not able to change back to 100%. I re-enable ‘Use default value’ and reboot to get back to 100%. Not sure if it matters, but I have a Radeon 5700 XT w/ open source drivers. Hopefully this makes it into 20.04, would be great to be able to switch between 100% and 125% on my laptop.

    6. Robert Bernecky December 22, 2019 at 4:50 pm

      I am running 19.10 with an Nvidia GPU card. Setting fractional scaling
      results in a distorted display: the scaling is not performed on both horizontal and vertical axes.

      • Robert Bernecky December 25, 2019 at 9:37 pm

        Follow-up: This now works properly. On a 32″ 4K screen, scaling of 1.4 looks fine.
        Unfortunately, I do not know why the distortion went away.
        I am now running Ubuntu 19.10, and went through several iterations of
        restart/poweroff along the way.

        Bottom line: It looks like the suggested change works.

    7. Weiyi Zhao February 22, 2020 at 5:29 pm

      for ubuntu 19.10, it does not work temporarily.

    8. Li Jiang February 23, 2020 at 12:47 am

      Worded!
      Thank you.

    9. Pacho April 27, 2020 at 3:52 pm

      The experimental feature scales only up to 200% and removes 300% and 400% which are available by default for high resolution screen like in my case 3840 x 2160. I would love to be able to use 250%. Can you suggest how? Thank You