Stop squinting! 10 ways to make Windows easier on the eyes

A modern Windows PC works great with a high-resolution display — or with multiple displays. But even so, it’s easy to find yourself squinting at small elements on your screen while you’re working.

You don’t have to put up with that, though. Windows has a whole slew of settings that can enhance your experience, enlarging elements to make them more readable and generally just making everything on your screen easier to see.

The tips we’re about to go over work on both Windows 10 and Windows 11. They’re pretty easy to adjust — but some are well-hidden.

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The most important trick: Tweak display scaling

Display scaling is the first and most consequential setting to adjust. Modern displays are often so high resolution that displaying elements one-to-one would result in everything being tiny. That’s why Windows will set a display scaling setting that changes the size of basically everything on your display. It’s set to 150% on many displays by default.

But the power is ultimately in your hands. You can increase this setting to make everything larger. Or, you can decrease it to make everything smaller, letting you see more elements on screen at one time.

This is also a per-display setting — so if you have multiple displays connected to your PC or if you have a laptop with an external monitor, you can set a different scaling percentage for each display.

To change this, head to Settings > System > Display on your PC. On Windows 11, change the “Scale” setting. (Windows will recommend one specific setting for your display, but you can choose another.) On Windows 10, use the “Change the size of text, apps, and other items” box.

If you ever want things larger or smaller, start with the Scale option.Chris Hoffman, Foundry

You can even click “Scale” and enter a custom percentage if you really want to get nuanced, but Windows recommends sticking with one of the default options. (On Windows 10, click “Advanced scaling settings” to take total control.)

Increase text size

Windows will also let you change the text size, specifically, throughout the entire operating system. Text size does get larger as you increase the display scaling percentage, but so does everything else. The text size slider lets you make just text larger without affecting anything else.

To change this on Windows 11, head to Settings > Accessibility > Text size. Drag the slider to choose a new size.

On Windows 10, head to Settings > Ease of Access > Display. Use the “Make text bigger” slider at the top of the window.

First, change display scaling. Then, tweak text size if you still want text larger.Chris Hoffman, Foundry

Zoom in on web pages and documents

Aside from making those universal adjustments, you can easily zoom in on any web page in a browser like Google Chrome or in a document in applications like Microsoft Word.

To quickly zoom in, either hold down the Ctrl key and rotate your mouse wheel up or press Ctrl and the + key. You can also use the – key to zoom out or press Ctrl+0 to revert to the default zoom level.

Chrome and other modern web browsers will automatically remember this setting for each website you adjust. So, if you find a certain web page always has text that’s too small to read comfortably, you can zoom in once — and your browser should retain that specific zoom setting every time you load that same site in the future.

Enhance your mouse pointer and text cursor

On a larger display, it can sometimes be hard to see the mouse pointer and the text cursor. You can make both more visible at a glance by choosing a custom color and size.

To customize your mouse pointer on Windows 11, go to Settings > Accessibility > Mouse pointer and touch. On Windows 10, head to Settings > Ease of Access > Mouse pointer. The options within either area will let you choose a colorful mouse pointer with any color you like and increase its size, too.

To customize the text cursor on Windows 11, go to Settings > Accessibility > Text cursor for a similar set of options. On Windows 10, head to Settings > Ease of Access > Text cursor.

A larger, more colorful mouse pointer is a big help on a large display (or multiple displays).Chris Hoffman, Foundry

Widen scrollbars (and stop them from hiding)

Windows lets you customize the size of classic scrollbars in traditional desktop apps like Google Chrome. You can’t customize the size of scrollbars in more “modern” Windows apps, although you can stop Windows from automatically hiding them.

This tweak takes a registry hack, but it’s fast and easy to manage. To get wider scrollbars in Google Chrome and other apps, check out my guide to enlarging scrollbars. (It’ll tell you how to stop Windows from automatically hiding those scrollbars, too.)

Increase your taskbar size

On Windows 10, you can easily get a taller taskbar. To do so, right-click an empty spot on the taskbar and uncheck “Lock the taskbar” if it’s checked. Then, hover your mouse cursor over the top edge of the taskbar. When you see it change to a draggable cursor style, click and drag it upwards. You can then lock the taskbar again.

Unfortunately, this is one of many taskbar options Microsoft abandoned in its move to Windows 11. Recent Insider builds show Microsoft might be bringing a similar option back in the future. Until then, you’ll find options for enlarging the taskbar in third-party tools like Start11 ($10 and polished) and ExplorerPatcher (free but less polished).

Make File Explorer’s icons bigger

To make File Explorer easier to navigate on a larger display, try using larger icons. You can enlarge them just like you can scroll a web page: Hold down the Ctrl key and scroll up with the mouse wheel. As a bonus, this even works on the Windows desktop, giving you larger desktop icons.

Bump your display’s refresh rate

While a higher refresh rate isn’t going to make any on-screen elements larger, it will offer a smoother desktop experience that’ll feel much nicer to use. This is critical — and something that’s easy to miss. Even if you have a buttery smooth high-refresh rate display, Windows often starts it at a bog-standard 60Hz refresh rate when you first plug it in unless you go out of your way to tweak it.

To do so, head to Settings > System > Display > Advanced Display and choose the refresh rate you want your display to use. (On Windows 10, scroll down to the bottom of the Display pane to find the “Advanced display settings” link.)

For a better desktop experience, use the highest refresh rate you can with your display hardware.Chris Hoffman, Foundry

If your display supports a higher refresh rate, it’ll be nicer when running at that high refresh rate. The downside? On a laptop, a higher refresh rate could chew through battery power faster. Also, a higher refresh rate signal requires more data, and it may be an issue if you have an older cable or a dock that can’t push enough data fast enough. That’s why Windows always seems to choose a safe (and slow) default.

Zoom in on everything with the Magnifier

For a less eye-straining reading experience, you can also always turn to the built-in Windows Magnifier tool. To launch it, press the Windows key and the + (plus sign) key. Then, hold the Windows key and tap the + and – keys to zoom in and out. You can move the visible part of the screen around with your mouse. To escape magnification mode, press Windows+Esc.

The Magnifier tool is quick to summon with just a single keypress.Chris Hoffman, Foundry

It’s that simple. There’s also Microsoft’s ZoomIt application, which some people prefer — but you’ll have to go out of your way to get that yourself. You can download it from Microsoft’s website or get it as part of the Microsoft PowerToys package. 

Here’s how to use ZoomIt, once you have it.

Tweak broken apps if they look blurry or small

At this point, Windows applications have had many years to adapt to high refresh rate displays. Nearly every Windows application you might use should work fine with modern display scaling settings.

However, some applications — particularly older ones that haven’t been updated in many years but still run on modern versions of Windows — might not look great with modern display scaling options. They might even look blurry and hard to read.

In such cases, you have some options for tweaking each app from its Properties window. To find these options, right-click an application’s shortcut. You can do this from the taskbar on Windows 11 by right-clicking an application’s taskbar icon, right-clicking its name in the menu that pops up, and then selecting “Properties.”

Click over to the “Compatibility” tab and then click the “Change high DPI settings” button.

Remember: You only need to change these settings if a rare application looks blurry or if it doesn’t appear to be scaling like other apps do.

There are a few other settings worth reviewing here, too: First, “Program DPI” will let you force an app to use the DPI setting of the monitor you launch it on if it has trouble adapting on the fly when multiple displays are in use.

Second, “High DPI scaling override” will give you three options for how exactly the scaling is handled. Here’s what they mean:

Application: The application itself performs the scaling. This is the modern default option that works best — assuming the application was designed with modern display-scaling options in mind.

System (Enhanced): Windows will take over and scale the application itself. For very old applications, this is your best bet.

System: If the Enhanced option doesn’t work properly with a particularly old application, this option will result in a blurrier image but may be the only solution that works for some applications.

The good news is most people won’t have to fuss with those compatibility options anymore. Modern applications are rarely “broken” like they used to be. Still, the default Windows scaling settings might not always work for everyone. That’s why, like everything else in this list, it’s important to adjust them until you’re comfortable.

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