How to Change the Display Scaling in Plex Media Player on Windows

Hey there! Today, I want to talk to you about something really cool. Do you ever find yourself squinting at your Plex Media Player and wishing the display was a bit bigger or clearer? Well, I have some good news for you! You can actually adjust the display scaling in Plex Media Player on your Windows device. Let me show you how.

First things first, open up your Plex Media Player. Once you have it up and running, take a look at the top-right corner of the window. See that gear icon? That’s the settings button. Go ahead and click on it.

A drop-down menu will appear. Look for an option called “Display Settings” and click on it.

Now, this is where the magic happens. You’ll see a slider that says “Display Scaling”. By moving this slider to the left or right, you can adjust the size of the text and icons in Plex Media Player. Simply slide it to the left to make everything smaller, or slide it to the right to make everything larger. Play around with it until you find the perfect scaling for your liking.

Once you’re happy with your new display scaling, click on the “Apply” button at the bottom. Plex Media Player will then adjust the display according to your settings.

And that’s all there is to it! You’ve successfully changed the display scaling in Plex Media Player on your Windows device. Easy peasy, right?

Remember, if you ever want to go back to the default display scaling, you can always come back to this menu and click on the “Reset” button.

So there you have it, my friends. Now you know how to adjust the display scaling in Plex Media Player. Enjoy your movie nights without the hassle of straining your eyes. Have fun!

If you’re using the Plex Media Player app in “Web mode” on a high-resolution display in Windows 10, the app will automatically set the scaling to 200 percent, making everything big and clear. However, for many users, this 200 percent scaling is actually too large. It means that you can see fewer media files on the screen and it’s hard to use the app effectively in a window.
Unfortunately, there’s currently no way to adjust the display scaling in the Plex Media Player’s settings. But don’t worry, you can still manually change the scale factor by modifying the app’s shortcut. Let me show you how.

Let’s Get Things Clear

First, it’s important to note that there are different versions of Plex available on various devices. In this tip, we’re specifically referring to the Plex Media Player app for Windows. This is the standalone version that you can download from the Plex website. The app has two modes: desktop (or “Web”) and TV.
The tip we’re discussing here only affects the desktop mode, which is identical to the version of Plex you see when using a web browser. If you’re using the Plex Media Player app, you can switch modes by clicking on the icon with the arrows in the toolbar at the top of the window.

Adjusting Plex Scaling

Now that we have that cleared up, let’s proceed with adjusting the Plex display scaling in Windows 10. To do this, we need to access the app’s shortcut properties. You can either manually find the shortcut by using File Explorer, or if the app is on your taskbar, you can right-click on the icon, then right-click again on Plex Media Player, and finally select Properties.

In the Properties window that appears, go to the Shortcut tab and find the box labeled Target. To change the default Plex scaling, we need to add a modifier to the Target entry.

Place your cursor at the end of the path in the Target box (outside of the quotation mark), press the spacebar once to add a space, and then type the following:

–scale-factor=1

Just click Apply to save the change and then quit and relaunch the app. When you do this, Plex will use 100 percent scaling, which is great if you’re using it on a big high-resolution display. Of course, you can change that scaling value to whatever you prefer. For example, if you enter 1.5 instead of 1, you’ll get 150 percent scaling. You can even enter values smaller than 1, like 0.5, if you have a really large display. However, I should note that values smaller than 1 might cause some graphical issues, so it’s usually best to keep the value at or above 100 percent.

When you compare it to the default 200 percent scaling shown in the image at the top of this article, you can see the difference that adjusting the display scaling makes. On our own 43-inch 4K monitor, with Plex scaling at 100 percent, much more content is visible at once while still being a usable size. If you don’t like the result, though, you can simply keep adjusting the scaling value up or down until you find a percentage that works for you. Just remember, you’ll need to quit and relaunch the app after each change to see it in action.

Be cautious when scaling Plex

Although we’ve been using this trick for a while without any problems, Plex support staff have mentioned that the app doesn’t officially have display scaling in its settings because it can cause issues in certain setups.
If you do run into problems, though, you can simply go back to the properties of the Plex shortcut and remove the scale factor modifier to restore the app’s default scaling behavior.