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Screen elements are too small to click or read on my 4K laptop screen. How do I make it obey Gnome scaling, which is set to 200%?

I'm on Fedora 29, but this should be the same issue on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS

This issue also affects macbook retina display screens.

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Ray Foss
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    PSA: Using a scaleFactor >= 2 will for some reason make screen sharing buttons disappear (tested in Ubuntu 20.4.1, using ZOOM 5.4.6). Try using scaleFactor of 1.9 or 1.75 instead. – Hyperplane Dec 09 '20 at 10:31

7 Answers7

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An answer that does not require changing common files that may be changed by future installs:

Zoom currently creates a file named zoomus.conf under your .config folder in the user's home folder.

One of the settings is ScaleFactor, set to 1 by default. Set this to 2, and next time you start the application it will have appropriate-sized visuals.

RealSkeptic
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  • Thank you, you saved my time – id3vz Apr 25 '20 at 03:08
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    Thank you! Here's the oneliner: perl -i -pe 's/scaleFactor=1/scaleFactor=2/' ~/.config/zoomus.conf – assafmo Jun 02 '20 at 08:48
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    This worked for me too, though I was having the opposite problem. My external monitor was scaled correctly, but the built-in laptop screen it was at double the size, and very big. It was scaleFactor=auto and I changed it to scaleFactor=1 - thanks, very helpful! – david_nash Jul 04 '20 at 04:38
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    It doesn't have to be full number, ScaleFactor=2 made the icons kind of blurry, but ScaleFactor=1.5 works great for me – Greg Aug 14 '20 at 15:18
  • Doesn't work properly. I've got a huge window with huge buttons. (Kubuntu 20.04, Plasma Version: 5.18.5, with default env QT_AUTO_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTOR=0). useSystemTheme=true as mentioned below works fine. – Ilia w495 Nikitin Nov 24 '20 at 14:10
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    autoscale=true worked for me, without changing scaleFactor – Reb.Cabin Dec 29 '20 at 16:29
  • Adding a line 'ScaleFactor=2' in the ringcentral.conf file worked for me – the world is not flat Sep 22 '21 at 12:35
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Recently I faced the opposite problem on Ubuntu 20.04 with Zoom 5.1.412382.0614: the UI was zoomed in and everything was too big.

The scaleFactor setting in the zoomus.conf file mentioned in the accepted answer was set to 1. However, changing the autoScale parameter to false solved the issue.

And as mentioned in the comments to this answer (thanks everyone!) it may be necessary to also set useSystemTheme=true so the autoScale parameter setting is respected.

Lino Ferreira
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    what a piece of garbage that software is. But this worked for me on ubuntu 19.04 on the new update. – Tarick Welling Jun 18 '20 at 14:06
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    Just had the same problem on Arch Linux distribution. Turning off autoScale worked for me too. – Lev K. Jun 19 '20 at 14:32
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    Lifesaver! Thanks! – Tilman Vogel Jun 20 '20 at 16:03
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    thanks, some problem. In my case, it only did this on my 4k monitor (which is not hidpi). Moving the window to a small monitor scaled back to normal. So auto-scale is treating my 4k monitor as hidpi based purely on resolution, I think. I reported this to zoom. – Tim Richardson Jun 23 '20 at 07:23
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    autoScale set to false but changed the scale factor to 2. Those two things in combination worked for me. – khatchad Jun 23 '20 at 23:09
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    Additionally, I had to set useSystemTheme=true in order for the scale factor setting to be respected. – Thorsten Jul 17 '20 at 08:25
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    If the config file is empty, you need to make sure autoScale=false is under the [General] section – mrspl Aug 13 '20 at 12:07
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    Worked for me too (on Ubuntu 20.04), thanks heaps! – Yuvalem Aug 17 '20 at 08:11
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    In my standard installation setting useSystemTheme=true helped everything else was already set correctly. Maybe you could mention that settings as well in your answer as well. – Alex Sep 07 '20 at 11:29
  • Actually, just set autoScale to true. – khatchad Oct 06 '20 at 16:30
  • I tried this with my flatpak zoom but I could not see any difference... – aanno Jun 07 '21 at 16:14
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The scale is set in an environment variable QT_DEVICE_PIXEL_RATIO.

You can add it to the desktop file in /usr/share/applications/Zoom.desktop by changing the Exec line to Exec=env QT_DEVICE_PIXEL_RATIO=2 /usr/bin/zoom %U

Or add export QT_DEVICE_PIXEL_RATIO=2 to you profile script

Source: zoom.us support

Ray Foss
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    Since Qt 5.6 the variable name has changed to QT_SCALE_FACTOR, therefore: export QT_SCALE_FACTOR=2 – dav.garcia Oct 22 '19 at 08:34
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    Funny enough, this makes perfectly good working applications like Okular look terrible. Thus, I only added it to the .desktop file. – khatchad Oct 30 '19 at 14:07
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In Fedora 31, installed from Flatpak, I edit ~/.local/share/applications/us.zoom.Zoom.desktop as Ray Foss suggested above.

Before:

Exec=/usr/bin/flatpak run --branch=stable --arch=x86_64 --command=zoom --file-forwarding us.zoom.Zoom @@u %U @@

After:

Exec=env QT_SCALE_FACTOR=2 /usr/bin/flatpak run --branch=stable --arch=x86_64 --command=zoom --file-forwarding us.zoom.Zoom @@u %U @@
Даниил Пронин
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    Instead of modifying the .desktop, a flatpack override can be used: flatpak override --env=QT_SCALE_FACTOR=2 us.zoom.Zoom – jkoelker Jun 22 '20 at 18:36
  • For pop users, path is ~/.local/share/flatpak/exports/share/applications/us.zoom.Zoom.desktop for Pop!_OS 20.04 – Ulad Kasach Nov 24 '20 at 15:21
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    This is exactly what worked for me, but (a) zoom flatpak is installed system-wide at /var/lib/flatpak/app/us.zoom.Zoom/current/active/export/share/applications/us.zoom.Zoom.desktop and (b) it scales too big on my 4k screen, i.e. QT_SCALE_FACTOR=0.5 is more appropriate. – aanno Jun 07 '21 at 16:11
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The other options did not directly work for me, however Luke Hsiao's tips [1] did.

With a Flatpack in Pop!_OS 20.04, I changed my ~/.local/share/flatpak/exports/share/applications/us.zoom.Zoom.desktop to include QT_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTORS env in the exec line. First I ran xrandr to find out my main screen is HDMI-A-0.

Then I prepended the env to the Exec line

Exec=env QT_SCREEN_SCALE_FACTORS=HDMI-A-0=2.00 /usr/bin/flatpak run --branch=stable --arch=x86_64 --command=zoom --file-forwarding us.zoom.Zoom @@u %U @@

If you have more monitors you can append their settings as comma-separated values.

[1] https://luke.hsiao.dev/blog/zoom-scaling/

flurdy
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1

If you are using wayland as your window manager you might want to run zoom in wayland as well. By default, it is xwayland.

The 2 advantages are:

  1. HiDPI is scaled correctly with default options
  2. The zoom window is rescaled when moved on a different screen (Useful with an external screen with a different resolution)

To enable zoom in wayland mode: Exec=env QT_QPA_PLATFORM=wayland /usr/bin/zoom %U

My zoomus.conf is as follow: autoScale=true, scaleFactor=1 and useSystemTheme=true.

Eric M.
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0

Zoom can be started with a proper scaling by overriding the QT_SCALE_FACTOR environment variable.

$ QT_SCALE_FACTOR=2 zoom

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HiDPI#Zoom

FL1NT
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