Why does text on my monitor look blurry or too small?

A flat panel has a fixed grid of pixels, and it looks sharp only when the picture it is sent has exactly that many. Ask it to display fewer and it has to spread them across the grid, which softens every edge. This is the difference from an old tube monitor, which genuinely could run at several resolutions equally well, and it is why the instinct to lower the resolution to make things bigger produces such a disappointing result.

Step by step

1. Find the monitor's native resolution and set it.It is in the monitor's specification and usually flagged as recommended in the display settings. If the setting is anything else, that alone explains soft text and nothing else will fix it.
2. Use scaling to change size, not resolution.Scaling keeps the panel at full sharpness and draws everything larger. It is a separate setting from resolution, usually a percentage. This is the correct control for 'everything is too small'.
3. Set scaling per screen when you have more than one.A high-resolution laptop panel and an ordinary external monitor need different percentages to make text the same physical size. Both operating systems allow this and it is rarely set.
4. Log out and back in after changing scaling.Some applications only read the scaling setting when they start. Blurry text in one program while everything else is sharp is usually an application that needs restarting.
5. Check the refresh rate.If the monitor supports a high refresh rate but the computer is sending a low one, motion will look less smooth, and a wrong setting here occasionally produces a soft or oddly coloured picture too.
6. Rule out the cable and the connection type.A cable that cannot carry the full bandwidth may fall back to a lower resolution automatically. If the native resolution is not offered at all, suspect the cable or the port before the monitor.
7. Turn off the monitor's own sharpness and picture processing.Monitors have picture settings much like televisions. A sharpness control turned up adds artificial edges; a picture mode intended for video can soften text. Neutral or standard settings suit text best.
8. Turn on the text smoothing option if text looks thin.Both operating systems have a subpixel text rendering setting, and there is usually a short tuning routine. It makes a genuine difference on ordinary-resolution panels.
9. Check the physical set-up before blaming the screen.Distance, height and lighting affect legibility as much as any setting. A screen too far away, too low, or with a window reflected in it will never read comfortably.

Tips

• If text is blurry only in one application, it is that application rather than the display. Older programs that were never updated for scaled displays are the usual culprits.
• A very high-resolution monitor viewed at 100 per cent scaling makes everything tiny. That is expected — such screens are designed to be used scaled.
• Cleaning the screen properly removes a surprising amount of perceived blur, and it costs nothing to try first.

Common mistakes

• Lowering the resolution to make things bigger — It defeats the panel's fixed pixel grid and softens everything permanently. Scaling exists precisely so you do not have to do this.
• Turning up the monitor's sharpness control — It adds artificial outlines rather than detail, and on text it makes matters worse rather than better.

If it doesn't work

Questions people ask