9

I've installed gnome in my new 14.04 (not the Ubuntu-Gnome distribution). I've noticed the title bars are huge though, and I would like to change.

The things is that this solution from here is not available for me:

  1. Go to System Settings.

  2. Go to Displays.

  3. Go to "Scale for menu and title bars."

  4. Drag the slider to your preferred size.

Is there somewhere else I could change this? I looked in gnome-tweak-tool and also ubuntu-tweak-tool without success.

This is my display windows and, as you can see, there is no scale option. This is my display windows and, as you can see, there is no scale option.

1
  • Why would you need another option to change this? Are you not satisfied? Or **Why is it not available for you?
    – rubo77
    Jun 22, 2014 at 9:11

2 Answers 2

7

You can find out where the setting is changed if you open a terminal:

gsettings list-recursively>/tmp/before
echo 'Now unity-control-center should open. Please change the scaling in "Displays" and close.'
unity-control-center
gsettings list-recursively>/tmp/after
diff /tmp/before /tmp/after |grep '[>|<]'

You find out, that these settings were changed (changing from scaling 1.0 to 2.0):

< org.gnome.desktop.interface scaling-factor uint32 1
> org.gnome.desktop.interface scaling-factor uint32 2
< com.ubuntu.user-interface scale-factor {'HDMI1': 8, 'eDP1': 8}
> com.ubuntu.user-interface scale-factor {'HDMI1': 8, 'eDP1': 16}

Or changing from 1.0 to 1.5 there is changed the text-scaling-factor instead, because scale-factor is integer:

< org.gnome.desktop.interface text-scaling-factor 1.0
> org.gnome.desktop.interface text-scaling-factor 1.5
< org.gnome.desktop.interface cursor-size 24
> org.gnome.desktop.interface cursor-size 36
< com.ubuntu.user-interface scale-factor {'HDMI1': 8, 'eDP1': 8}
> com.ubuntu.user-interface scale-factor {'HDMI1': 8, 'eDP1': 12}

from 1.5 to 2.0:

< org.gnome.desktop.interface scaling-factor uint32 1
> org.gnome.desktop.interface scaling-factor uint32 2
< org.gnome.desktop.interface text-scaling-factor 1.5
> org.gnome.desktop.interface text-scaling-factor 1.0
< org.gnome.desktop.interface cursor-size 36
> org.gnome.desktop.interface cursor-size 24
< com.ubuntu.user-interface scale-factor {'HDMI1': 8, 'eDP1': 12}
> com.ubuntu.user-interface scale-factor {'HDMI1': 8, 'eDP1': 16}

Those settings can be edited by hand with dconf-editor

This is very interesting in context with the about:config variable in Firefox: devPixelsPerPx that changes the size inside Firefox (see also: Why are all HTML form elements huge with a system-wide font-scale factor 2.0?)

Also, you can write a script to change the scale factor with these settings like /usr/local/bin/setscalefactor:

if [ "$1" == "1" ]; then
  # set scaling to x1.0
  gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface scaling-factor 1
  gsettings set com.ubuntu.user-interface scale-factor "{'HDMI1': 8, 'eDP1': 8}"
else
  # set scaling to x2.0
  gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface scaling-factor 2
  gsettings set com.ubuntu.user-interface scale-factor "{'HDMI1': 8, 'eDP1': 16}"
fi

additionally:

This doesn't scale the title bars and menu, but there is also unity-tweak-tool, where you can change the overall font-scaling.

Maybe that is an alternative you could use apart from the Scaling Support in System Settings

2

I don't have reputation to comment, so I just want to say thanks to rubo77, because his answer does not only solves the problem well, but adds a useful piece of code to scope into gsettings.

I would also like to contribute some more...

On my HP ProBook 5320m, the output of his script when moving slider from 0.875 to 1 is:

< org.gnome.desktop.interface text-scaling-factor 0.875
> org.gnome.desktop.interface text-scaling-factor 1.0
< org.gnome.desktop.interface cursor-size 21
> org.gnome.desktop.interface cursor-size 24
< com.ubuntu.user-interface scale-factor {'default': 8, 'VGA1': 6, 'LVDS1': 7}
> com.ubuntu.user-interface scale-factor {'default': 8, 'VGA1': 6, 'LVDS1': 8}

but I've found out, that it is enough to change the value in the last line standing for com.ubuntu.user-interface scale-factor LDVS1 parameter. Obviously this is always 8 times the real scale factor and the cursor-size and text-scaling-factor is changing along with it accordingly (for scaling >2 it changes also < org.gnome.desktop.interface scaling-factor uint32 from 1 to 2 or higher, but the described procedure still works the same).

This

function gnsc {
    b=$(echo "scale=0; $1*8" | bc) 
    b=${b%.*} 
    gsettings set com.ubuntu.user-interface scale-factor "{'default': 8, 'VGA1': 6, 'LVDS1': $b}" 
}

is what I put in my .bashrc to change the scaling flawlessly within a terminal, eg. typing gnsc 0.875, even though I don't have that problem of missing slider from the initial question.

This is my first post on StackExchange ever, so I hope someone will find it useful! :)

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