Macbook Pro M5 when connected to Dell S2722QC monitor shows fonts and icons and programs all in various sizes when in 4K resolutin. I can change hover text size which changes the font on the desktop icons and their sizes, but all programs and fonts remail shrunken. Same monitor connected to PC with 34K to same monitor everything resized perfectly. Any tips or suggestions?
Thanks,
MacBook Pro 14″, macOS 26.2
Change the “resolution” in Displays Settings. Unless you go to some trouble to bring up a list including “(low resolution)” choices, everything from “1920x1080” on up will actually use the full resolution of the monitor.
E.g., “like 2560x1440” will size things as if the display only had 2560x1440 pixels, but will draw in detail on a 5120x2880 (5K) canvas whose contents will be downsampled to fit on the actual 4K screen. If you select 3840x2160, the canvas will have 3840x2160 pixels, and on a 27” monitor, text and objects will be very small.
This is different from the way Windows does things, but in the early days of high-PPI / Retina displays, it offered greater backwards compatibility.
in general, best results are obtained by selecting from the settings on this SCALED display settings pane:
Thanks...wound up going with 2560X1440 after seeing it wouldn't work like Windows does. Haven't had a MB Pro since the last of the SATA drive models, so re-learning lot of stuff..
Thanks again..
Macbook Prom M5 4K external display.
