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Is there any way to run an application scaling its GUI window? (Well, I'm using MATE but hope for universal solution). For example, up scale small window of an old game running under wine on high-resolution display or shrink windows that doesn't fit low-resolution display and so on.

I'm not looking for any way of changing running Xorg resolution. I'm looking for a way to scale specific program. I'm not looking for any type of VM solution. However there might be an X server displaying and scaling applications inside a window.

Magnifying part of the screen to whole screen might be acceptable solution also. But screen magnifiers like kmag is not suitable since it makes duplicate of picture and do magnify its own windows too disabling be full-screen expanded and doesn't support mouse clicks on magnified area.

P.S. Well, if there is no such way, is there a way to force application running full screen?

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3 Answers 3

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Came across run_scaled from an answer to a similar question. I am using it like this:

run_scaled some-app

By default it scales the window by a factor of 2, but that is customizable with the --scale option.

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  • 1
    Doesn't work with Thunderbird, Emacs, or Chromium.
    – Peter Flynn
    Commented Feb 22, 2019 at 20:57
  • That script does not handle any dependency resolution and there are system packages that are required for it to work (or for xpra program that it uses). At least following packages are required: python2.7-cups python2.7-gtkglext1 python-opencv xpra python-pyinotify. You can probably debug running xpra first, and if that works then the script should work too.
    – Cray
    Commented Dec 23, 2019 at 16:53
  • Unfortunately, xpra depends on doubtful pipewire and doesn't work for me (pulseaudio).
    – Nick
    Commented May 20, 2023 at 18:36
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Thanks! run_scaled works for me to re-scale Wine Apps. Seems to be a bash script that you use to run the X-windows program of interest. (Using X11. Did not test using Wayland)

  • Ubuntu 2.04 LTS
  • snap remarkable-desktop
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For anyone who runs across this, take a look at Gamescope, which nicely solves this problem. You can use it to force an application to run full screen, or force a full-screen application to run in a window, and you are in full control of the resolution of the virtual display that the game "sees" and the size of the window if you choose to run it that way.

It can be used with applications that are not games, but if it is an application that uses multiple windows, the behavior is a bit odd. It can only show one window at a time.

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/gamescope

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  • Unfortunately, Gamescope depends on doubtful programs like wayland and pipewire and doesn't work for me (X11/MATE+pulseaudio).
    – Nick
    Commented May 20, 2023 at 18:35
  • I have been using it on X11/KDE+PulseAudio without any trouble. It does work more efficiently if your desktop session is Wayland but that isn't a hard requirement.
    – Truisms Hounds
    Commented May 20, 2023 at 20:58
  • Maybe it is a distro- (Fedora) specific trouble, I'll try to build from sources and check.
    – Nick
    Commented May 21, 2023 at 12:52

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