personalize display with Docking station

[Stephan]

Hi all,

I've just installed my new docking station for the surface pro 3 and I was wondering :

I've changed the default display on my SP3 in order to have bigger icons & text (It's a little bit messy with Adobe Flash as everything is really zoomed and buttons are out of the screen but otherwise it's working). I've adjust the screen resolution to "Larger - 150%".

Is it possible that, when I'm connecting the SP3 to the docking station, the screen resolution automatically goes to "default - 100%" ?

If not, what did you do with your SP3 ? Did you let the default resolution (100%) ? Don't you find that icons and text are really small that way ?

Thx for your answers !

 

[Aurelio]

I'm using 125%.... it's perfect for a Laptop or Tablet.... Sometimes with almost full brightness or full, I like sometimes 100%.

 

[agt499]

Hi Stephan

I find that when I connect external monitors (either via the dock or direct), the windows scaling automatically calculates what will be the most annoying combination of pixel density and blurring for the active displays.
When just using the SP3 display I default to the 150% equivalent part of the slider (one 'notch' back from the largest of the four notches), but as soon as I connect an display, the slider has more like seven 'notches' that control both the internal and external displays. Every one of these notches presents either tiny controls on the SP3 or gargantuan elements on the external displays. By changing which is designated the 'Main Display', I can however select which display I want to simulate being covered in vaseline, which is a bonus.
Of course I can 'Choose one scaling level', which means that none of the displays are blurry, but this makes the scaling disparity even worse.
I also find that logging out and in again once docked changes the scaling again.

All I really want is a separate slider for each display, so I can set the SP3 display to 150% always , and my external displays to 100% always. That's all.

Prior to getting my SP3 I had read about scaling issues with Win8+/HighDPI, and most reports indicated that 3rd party apps needed to get their act together. My experience is that all the native windows applications, control panels etc are rubbish too.

Sorry if I got my grump on a bit!

 

[Stephan]

Thank you for your answer agt499 !

All I really want is a separate slider for each display, so I can set the SP3 display to 150% always , and my external displays to 100% always. That's all.

Sorry if I got my grump on a bit!

Exactly !

 

[agt499]

Thank you for your answer agt499 !



Exactly !

Of course I really mean set the SP3 display to WhateverIWantForDisplay1 % always , and any external displays individually to WhateverIWantForDisplay$X % always.

I'm sure you knew exactly what I meant, but on the off chance that a windows engineer ever stumbles across this, I thought it was best to be crystal clear!

 

[Stephan]

Sorry to reopen this thread but has someone found how to create "profils" for the size of texts and icons ?

When I'm on my SP3, the size of text and icons are at 200%.

But when I'm conecting it to the docking station I'm still at 200% and on a 27" it's BIG. too BIG !

Anyway to automatically adjust that ? 2 profils : SP3 only : 200% - Docking station : 100% ?

Thank you for your answers,

 

[plop28]

Hi,

with my first surface Pro 1, i did a cmd which change theme, change wifi adapter settings, and logout in order to apply the proper dpi scaling.

here an example :

"C:\Program Files (x86)\ThemeTool.exe" changetheme "C:\Users\XXX\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\Themes\DualScreen.theme"

netsh interface set interface name="Wi-Fi" admin=disabled

shutdown -f -l

You can also make a scheduled task in order to automatize that (play with the dock station network adapter event)

If you find another way, let us know

 

[agt499]

Sorry to reopen this thread but has someone found how to create "profils" for the size of texts and icons ?

When I'm on my SP3, the size of text and icons are at 200%.

But when I'm conecting it to the docking station I'm still at 200% and on a 27" it's BIG. too BIG !

Anyway to automatically adjust that ? 2 profils : SP3 only : 200% - Docking station : 100% ?

Thank you for your answers,

I haven't found a perfect answer, but I have found that when connected to external monitor(s), if I hit the 'Make this my main display' checkbox for the external in the Screen Resolution dialog, that the external display gets good scaling, even though the SP3 internal display is then too small. It's far from ideal, but usually when I'm at the dock I'm mainly looking at the big screens.
I do need to log out/in again after docking or undocking for things to settle, but having set the main display I tend to get SP3 internal scren right when undocked, and external displays right (but SP3 too small) when docked - no script required.