I use two monitors - that which is attached to my Windows 11 notebook and a larger monitor. For the last few days, when I drag Scrivener to the other monitor, the font get changed. For example, in settings my binder font is TNR 11. When I drag from the larger to the smaller monitor, the size o what is in the binder and metadata columns shrinks down to about TNR 6. I can barely read it and 55 binder items fit. When I move it back to the larger monitor, the reverse happens - the binder and metadata fonts stay at about 300x magnification no matter what I do. Rebooting does not always work. In fact, there is no one thing that âalways works.â The data set in this project is about 3 years old and constantly being added to. Is there a way to fix this short of never moving Scrivener from one monitor to another?
I saw a post in which someone suggested first making your project full screen and then switching it by holding down the Win and Shift keys and pressing the right or left arrow, which depends on the direction of your external monitor is setup.
I would say itâs a limitation of the framework on which the program was written on Windows.
I donât have a second monitor, so maybe someone else can jump in to confirm if this works, if it wonât for you.
One of the really big factors that slips under the radar when using multiple displays is video modes. Two different screens rarely have a pixel-perfect alignment either.
In my own setup, if I open Scrivener on my 14" MBPâs internal screen (254ppi at 1512 by 982) and then move the app to my external montior (81 ppi at 1920 by 1080) the mismatch in Pixels Per Inch (ppi) and resolution does impact how things look.
For comparison⌠I opened the tutorial and placed a 3x5 8 squares to the inch gridded index card against each screen. I did not make any changes to the tutorial other than moving the window from one screen to the other. I photographed each screen with my iphone and cropped the result to a similar section of the screen for clarity.
Here is my 14" MBPâs screen â XDR 254 ppi 1512 by 982 (default):
Note the font size, and the text height. The â14â looks like it could fit in one block by itself, and âis a ScrivenerâŚâ could fit in one row of boxes. The red âSâ is about three blocks tall.
Here is my external â 81ppi 1920 by 1080 (default):
Note the font size is still 14 but the â14â is larger, and looks to need 1.5 blocks now. The red âSâ needs five blocks now, and âis a ScrivenerâŚâ is more than a block tall. All that before considering the elephant in room, and that is that you can clearly see pixels on the external with its lower ppi count.
I have never seen Scrivener or any other word processing software package change the actual font details when moving from one screen to another, but I have seen the same font details look like they got changed when moving between monitors. I have seen font families changed when moving from one computer to another, but only when the exact font in the source is not installed on the target.
As for a solution, try changing the external monitor to a lower resolution setting. Not sure where Windows 11 hides this, but in Windows 10 you could get there by right clicking on the desktop and selecting âDisplay Optionsâ and from there you could get a list of possible resolutions. Be sure to select which screen you want to adjust and start with half the current resolution (1920 by 1080 becomes 960 by 540), and move up one step at a time from there until you get a resolution mode that fits your needs. This should be simple to apply and âfixâ and not require changing anything in your long standing dataset.
Hope this helps.
On Windows it has to so with the Qt framework on which Scrivener is developed. All other Apps switch fine. There will be more real estate on a wider screen. Hereâs an Excel example:
Laptop
External monitor
A very legible experience on both screens with a wider pallet to play with on one of them. Quite natural and expected.
Hereâs Scrivener:
Laptop
External Monitor
Horribly enlarged.
OR (depending on the resolution youâre moving to):
Awfully tiny.
Reading up on Qt, I found that thereâs an inherent problem with the framework when switching to disparate resolutions, i.e. itâs not a seamless experience.
If L&L have sufficient complaints about this, Iâm sure theyâll place it on the Qt forum wishlist or whatever.
But this work-around, as specified by @RevoTiLlor above works:
- On the default computer: Ensure the Scrivener app is set to full screen.
- Select Win+Shift and click one of the arrow keys to change the display to the second screen.
- It then render, as below, with minor constraintsânote the large drop-down arrowsâor they might be tiny depending on the resolution youâre switching to.
- Moving back to the default screen you do the Win+Shift thing again but press the arrow key in the other direction.
I wouldnât recommend fiddling with monitor displays for the sake of Scrivener because you will be messing things up for any standard application you use.
My screens are 4k switching to 1080p and vice versa.
Yes the windows can move the program from monitor screen to another use the arrow keys. (I have a 3 monitor setup and moves between all three)
Huh. Thanks for enlightening me on yet-another-way-windows-makes-things-worseâ˘.
Sarcasm aside, I really didnât know. And you are correct that if the win+arrow combination works, then its a better solution than adjusting monitor settings every time you want to load Scrivener with the external monitor attached.
Hello, sorry or taking so long to reply, but Win and Shit plus pressing the right (or left) arrow has fixed the problem. Odd, because Iâve been using Scrivener for nearly two years on the same hardware and the problem just started occuring. Thanks!
Freudian slip there?âoopsie.