Server Version#: 1.19.1.2645
Player Version#: 1.8.0.1159-67c4a549
Titles says it all.
Updated Plex for Windows last night. The app now follows the Windows base scaling only. It seems to ignore the PLEX_SCALE_FACTOR environmental variable. Have tried numerous different settings/restarts. App does not change scaling in response.
Can anyone else confirm?
Cheers.
Yeah, same here. Pretty lol.
PLEX_SCALE_FACTOR was hack used to workaround the app under or over scaling on Windows. The app now scales as expected without the workaround. The Plex for Windows app should have the same appearance as the default scale of the Plex Web app in Chrome.
Were you using PLEX_SCALE_FACTOR to force the interface to render larger/smaller than the Windows based scaling?
PLEX_SCALE_FACTOR was hack used to workaround the app under or over scaling on Windows. The app now scales as expected without the workaround. The Plex for Windows app should have the same appearance as the default scale of the Plex Web app in Chrome.
No, it was also a hack to provide support to people (like me) who have 4K displays and other unusual hardware that makes the default UI scale unuseable. You even have a support page for this very issue (see https://support.plex.tv/articles/configuring-windows-display-scale/). You’ve now broken the fix that your own support page tells people to use.
The fact that people are complaining about it means, by default, that the app DOES NOT “scale as expected”. Posters and fonts in the desktop app are now way too large to be useable. I’ve got the poster size slider set all the way to the left (smallest size) and posters are 8X larger than my desktop icons. Before the last update I could see 11 posters in a single row. Now I can see 6. It just looks stupid and makes the interface unuseable - especially if you have large libraries that now take 2X longer to browse.
It also DOES NOT have “the same appearance as the default scale of the Plex Web app in Chrome”. It looks fine in Chrome. I would be more than happy to send you images of this should you doubt me.
The environment variable fix - regardless of whether it was considered temporary or not - worked fine until the last update. Now it’s broken again for no apparent reason. The issue is now confirmed by a second user. We would really appreciate it being returned to the previous functionality or, if that’s too much trouble for some reason, having the scaling factor range available on the slider expanded so that we can make the UI workable for us again.
Thanks.
I understand where you’re coming from.
No, it was also a hack to provide support to people (like me) who have 4K displays and other unusual hardware that makes the default UI scale unuseable. You even have a support page for this very issue (see https://support.plex.tv/articles/configuring-windows-display-scale/). You’ve now broken the fix that your own support page tells people to use.
The support page existed to describe why the app doesn’t recognize windows scale and how to line it up. Using the scale factor to set an arbitrary scale wasn’t prevented but also wasn’t the intended usage. Regardless, thanks for bringing that up, we’ll take it down to avoid future confusion.
It also DOES NOT have “the same appearance as the default scale of the Plex Web app in Chrome”. It looks fine in Chrome. I would be more than happy to send you images of this should you doubt me.
It’s not doubt but yes please. More data is appreciated if you are willing to share.
Please share your Windows display scale setting and a screenshot of Plex for Windows along side Plex Web in Chrome. Be certain that Plex Web in Chrome is displaying at View > Actual Size. Have you changed any of your system fonts to be larger than default?
having the scaling factor range available on the slider expanded so that we can make the UI workable for us again.
If the app supported like a browser we’d be in business. I’ll look into it. In the meantime substitute QT_SCALE_FACTOR for PLEX_SCALE_FACTOR. Their behavior isn’t identical but should be close enough to help out.
In the meantime substitute QT_SCALE_FACTOR for PLEX_SCALE_FACTOR.
^^^ This.
Thank you for the suggestion. That solves the issue with Plex. All is back to how it was with the desktop app.
The bad news is that it also breaks the scaling on other QT apps like VLC but I can live with that. I hope others can too.
It’s not doubt but yes please. More data is appreciated if you are willing to share.
I’m sending you a screenshot of the desktop and Chrome apps side-by-side by PM.
(NOTE: I guess you’re not accepting PM’s. I’ll see what I can do to post something here that shows the issue while preserving privacy.)
(NOTE AGAIN: Privacy-enhanced screenshot now attached. Just to give an idea of real-life scale, that’s a shot from my 42" monitor so the real life size is 20" top to bottom and each of the posters in the app are about 3" tall. WAAAYYY too big. Even the smallest size in the Chrome app could be smaller.)
Please share your Windows display scale setting and a screenshot of Plex for Windows along side Plex Web in Chrome. Be certain that Plex Web in Chrome is displaying at View > Actual Size. Have you changed any of your system fonts to be larger than default?
My scal settings are different depending on the display. I work on a mutiple-monitor sytem that has everything from a 15" 4K laptop display to a 42" 4K display to a couple of 27" 1080’s. Each of them is adjusted for their individual size and resolution.
This is why the scaling factor becomes a problem for people like me. If I were running a typical 1080p monitor set at 100% scaling there wouldn’t be an issue. However, running the app on the big 4k where the WIndows scaling is set at 250% and the posters end up three inches high. It’s the collision between lack of flexibility in the UI and the unusual hardware (welcome to Windows, eh?) that causes the problem.
If the app supported like a browser we’d be in business. I’ll look into it.
This would be greatly appreciated. While I’m not a fan of the automatic scaling in the web app at least it gives you something to work with ala the slider. If you could get the desktop to function like that and maybe give us one more tick smaller in all of the apps I would be eternally happy with it.
Thanks for the help. At least I’m now temporarily happy with it again.
Cheers!
I’m having the same problem. Before the update, it looked perfect, I never touched any registry or anything, it was the default look of plex.
Go here for some screenshots comparing it.
+1 on this. Updated a few days ago and now the display is giant and blurred on my 1080p laptop display. Notice how the “now playing” details look slightly blurry?
User environment variables QT_SCALE_FACTOR or PLEX_SCALE_FACTOR =1.0 don’t work for me 
.
Help plz?
Have you tried using other values besides QT_SCALE_FACTOR=1.0?
I’m using QT_SCALE_FACTOR=0.5 but the best value is dependent on your hardware. You may need to go up or down from 1.0 depending on your setup.
Note that it’s best to try to keep the factor to integers or hard-rounded decimals (e.g. - 1.5, 1.25, 1, 0.5, etc.) putting in goofy numbers like 1.66587 can cause weird effects and will probably get rounded to the nearest hard decimal anyway.
That fixed it! Thanks for the suggestion, don’t know why I didn’t think to try that.
Read on some other blog that the lower limit was 1.0. Looks like it isn’t 
To me, 0.8 looks great on a Lenovo P50.
Plex staff, please put a scaling option in the UI, or at least add this fix to the FAQ?
I ended up with a cmd:
cmd.exe /c "SET QT_SCALE_FACTOR=0.5 && START /D ^"C:\Program Files\Plex\Plex\^" plex.exe"
As the user variable settings seriously messed up my apps.
Thank you
cmd.exe /c "SET QT_SCALE_FACTOR=0.5 && START /D ^"C:\Program Files\Plex\Plex\^" plex.exe"
I didn’t have a scaling issue on my 4k screen, but the app always jumped to the upper left corner when I left full screen mode. This would have been a dealbreaker but it is now behaving as it should, even though everything looks a bit small now.
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