Overview
This guide hopefully tells you how to fix the issue of unreadable fonts on your ultra crispy high-resolution display. This guide is for Project Zomboid but the process can be applied to many other games and applications.
Introduction
I run my monitors in a super-sampled resolution and constantly ran into the issue of not being able to read text without the biggest magnifying glass a terrestrial life form has ever manufactured.
Switching resolutions and/or DPI settings was not an option for me.
The solution? Make the game tell Windows that it is not DPI aware.
The result: it scales properly, albeit in some cases at the sacrifice of text quality in terms of crispness.
This is not ideal in many cases but helps to make it usable.
Example:
Before
After
Step 1 – Tell Windows to check for an external manifest file.
Backup your registry before changing anything if you are unsure. This is a simple thing and looks more intimidating and complicated than it actually is!
Press the Windows Button + R, type “regedit”, and click OK.
Navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > Microsoft > Windows > CurrentVersion > SideBySide
Right-click, select NEW > DWORD (32 bit) Value
Type “PreferExternalManifest” without the quotes, and then press ENTER.
Right-click PreferExternalManifest, and then click Modify.
Enter Value Data 1 and select Decimal.
Click OK. Close the Registry Editor.
Step 2 – Create an external manifest file
The hard part is done. Let’s get to the easier part.
Every application you want to change the scaling on will need a “manifest file” in its application folder, which is the same place where the application’s .exe is located at.
Navigate to your game folder.
Mine is at C:Program Files (x86)SteamSteamAppscommonProjectZomboid
Create a new text file here:
The name of the text file has to be the exact same as the complete executable. In the case of Project Zomboid, the exe is called “ProjectZomboid64.exe” so we will have to name our manifest file “ProjectZomboid64.exe.manifest”
Open the file you just created with a text editor of your choice.
Paste the following content into the text file. You will not have to change anything here.
Even if you apply the same process for another application or game, the content will still be the same.
Now we save the file and we’re set. Almost.
The last step is to make sure you DO NOT have “Disable display scaling on high DPI settings” set for the game .exe
To make sure this is not the case, right click the .exe and click “Properties”.
Go to the Compatibility tab and untick “Disable display scaling on high DPI settings”.
Boom. Done.
That’s it. If you now start the game, the text should now be more readable. A possible concession is that the image quality itself might not be as crisp anymore and, in the case of Project Zomboid, you lose a bit of zoom distance.
In some cases, you might have to start the game directly through the executable. The Steam shortcut might not work out as that would ignore the settings you’ve just set.
If you want to undo the changes you just made, just delete, rename, or move the created manifest file.