Adding/Using HiDPI custom resolutions

[HungLM96]

Hi RehabMan, I tried with my laptop screen (native 1920x1080) but no hiDPI, it just have scale resolutions.

 

[RehabMan]

Hi RehabMan, I tried with my laptop screen (native 1920x1080) but no hiDPI, it just have scale resolutions.

For each desired HiDPI resolution, you must also have an entry in the plist that is double both horizontal and vertical.
Your plist does not seem to have that...

Read post #1 carefully.

 

[hvedemelsbof]

Wow rehabman, you really have referred to the same stuff a lot of times I had similar problems with no hidpi-settings, turned out I hadn't removed the .plist extension. I'm now running 1080p (hidpi) on an external 1440p (base) screen - looking great. My way there:
- Get IORegistryExplorer -> search for "display" -> find vendor / product ID's
- Run terminal commands to enable hidpi
- Download Plistedit pro -> used online generator to make the xml-code (somewhere in this thread) -> pasted to plistedit -> save file
- REMOVE ".plist" extension (you have to right-click, "get info" and remove it there for it to not just hide it instead)
- Copy to appropriate folder (see post #1).
- Reboot
- Download and run "Retina display menu" to get access to the 1080p (hidpi) setting

 

[balazs631]

Thank you RehabMan and clouless for the guide, finally I managed to get my Dell U2515H work with custom HiDPI resolutions in macOS 10.12.2 Sierra. With only the onboard Intel HD4600 graphics (i5-4570s) I got max: 1920x1080 DPI, with an nVidia 750Ti it can go up a little bit higher: 2048x1152 DPI.

My findings & short guide:

- Make sure you carefully read post #1!

- DisplayProductID is not a constant value for Desktop PCs as you would expect. It changes depending on which GPU (onboard or dedicated) and which monitor port you want to plug into. I use a GTX 750TI Kalmx card with mHDMI-HDMI cable. If I plug the cable to HDMI1 in the Dell monitor, I got DisplayProductID-d070. If I plug it in HDMI2 I got DisplayProductID-d072. For miniDisPlayport I got DisplayProductID-d06F and so on...

- DisplayVendorID is not changing, it's always 0x10ac (hex) for Dell monitors.

- It's very important to not copy other people's plist configuration because it will not work if the DisplayProductID not matching with yours. And it's likely that it won't match, trust me... Easiest way to find out your IDs to run this command in Terminal:

ioreg -lw0 | grep IODisplayPrefsKey

Only the ending is important.. In my case it's "...AppleDisplay-10ac-d070" So my DisplayProductID is d070 and the DisplayVendorID is 10ac. (Both values are in hexadecimal format)

- You need to convert the hex ID values to decimal, for this I used Google, simply make a search for this: "0xd070 to decimal" it will show you the result: 53360. Put your value to the plist for DisplayProductID. Also don't forget to name the plist file according to the DisplayProductID hex value. In my case it's DisplayProductID-d070.plist.

- For generating the resolutions I used this calculator. Remember you have to have 2 resolutions for each HiDPI scaling. If you want to use 1920x1080 HiDPI then insert 1920x1080 and 3840x2160 (double). In my custom plist (attached) I have 12 rows added under "scaling-resolution" so it corresponds to 6 different HiDPI setting. Note that each line ends with 00000001 00200000.

- Don't use copy-paste for moving the final plist file to the Overrides folder. Always copy with Terminal otherwise it will have wrong permissions! For Dell monitors the plist file goes here: /System/Library/Displays/Contents/Resources/Overrides/DisplayVendorID-10ac

- Install RDM from here. Current version is 2.2
Without this software I was unable to select my custom HiDPI resolution. I tried to Option click on "Scaled" radio button under System Preferences / Displays, but it didn't list what I wanted. In RDM you can find the HiDPI resolutions with the lightning icon next to it. Don't forget to reboot after everything is done/installed!

- 2048x1152 HiDPI works, too! I don't even have to use a DisplayPort cable, a cheap HDMI cable can handle this resolution.

Attached my plist file and added some screenshots! Cheers

 

[RehabMan]

- You need to convert the hex ID values to decimal

Actually, if you use Xcode, you can enter hex numbers with the 0x prefix and Xcode will automatically convert to decimal.

 

[bozma88]

Gosh.
I find myself somehow unable to make it work.
I have a 1920x1080 internal panel.
I want 1600x900 HiDpi, so I created a plist with 1600x900 and 3200x1800, both with HiDpi flags.
Properly installed, checked file ownership, checked Product and Vendor ID, but I cannot see the new resolutions even with switchresX.
So I managed to create a custom resolution with SwitchResX and I was able to switch to Hi-Dpi scaled 1600x900, but the system always hangs up seconds after I choose that resolution.

=> My laptop has DVMT limited to 64MB. Could this be the cause? Maybe the system hides resolutions that can't handle with that DVMT, and forcing them causes KP. Am I wrong?

Thank you.

 

[RehabMan]

Gosh.
I find myself somehow unable to make it work.
I have a 1920x1080 internal panel.
I want 1600x900 HiDpi, so I created a plist with 1600x900 and 3200x1800, both with HiDpi flags.
Properly installed, checked file ownership, checked Product and Vendor ID, but I cannot see the new resolutions even with switchresX.
So I managed to create a custom resolution with SwitchResX and I was able to switch to Hi-Dpi scaled 1600x900, but the system always hangs up seconds after I choose that resolution.

=> My laptop has DVMT limited to 64MB. Could this be the cause? Maybe the system hides resolutions that can't handle with that DVMT, and forcing them causes KP. Am I wrong?

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Thank you.

Your plist lacks a resolution for your native panel resolution (1920x1080).
Also, keep in mind there should be no plist file extension once installed (to the correct directory).

 

[bozma88]

Your plist lacks a resolution for your native panel resolution (1920x1080).
Also, keep in mind there should be no plist file extension once installed (to the correct directory).

Does I have to set the HiDPI flags on the native resolution?
Dir and extensions were correct, let's hope this is the only error I made.

 

[RehabMan]

Does I have to set the HiDPI flags on the native resolution?
Dir and extensions were correct, let's hope this is the only error I made.

For the native res, you do not need any flags.
I don't know what you mean by "extensions were correct"... there should be NO extensions.

 

[bozma88]

For the native res, you do not need any flags.
I don't know what you mean by "extensions were correct"... there should be NO extensions.

It was just the wrong way to say: yes, the file got copied without the extension via sudo command.

Anyway, no success, unfortunately. What am I doing wrong? DVMT limit maybe?