Monday, July 3, 2023

MacBook Pro M1 with 4K monitors on a ThinkPad USB-C dock

I have a couple of 4K monitors at work via a ThinkPad dock. If I were running the native resolution of 3840x2160 pixels the fonts and icons were just too small for my aging eyes. The alternative native resolution was 1980x1080, and then things get too large.

The ideal for me is scaling to 2560x1440. Sure you can do this via the display system settings, but then everything is blurry. But there is a fix.

  1. Install DisplayLink Manager from https://www.synaptics.com/products/displaylink-graphics/downloads/macos 
  2. Check the experimental mode for 3008x and 2560x modes support
  3. Then pick scaled text in Display settings, getting you a nativ scaled 2560x1440 which is not blurry in HiDPI mode. See https://support.displaylink.com/knowledgebase/articles/1993915.