Macos and 4k monitors (horribly small system fonts)

There's an inherent tradeoff between

• The physical size of a monitor
• The amount of stuff you cram onto it
• The readability of that stuff

Book printing has an even higher PPI/DPI resolution than most 4K screens or Retina screens. If publishers were to equate "not wasting resolution" with "cramming as much stuff onto the printed page as they possibly could", you would see all books printed in 2-point (maybe smaller) text. Not in any readable text size.

In the case of a 27" – 32" 4K monitor, you're much better running at one of the Retina settings a notch or two down from "Larger Text" (Retina "like 1920x1080"), instead of at native 3840x2160 ("More Space").

For instance, in the Retina "UI looks like 2560x1440" mode (one notch down from "Larger Text"),

• Applications size things "as if" the monitor had 2560x1440 pixels.
• Retina-aware applications draw in fine detail on an internal canvas that has 5120x2880 pixels.
• The Mac downscales the 5K canvas onto the 4K screen.
• The result is that the system uses all of the extra resolution that a 4K monitor has over a 2.5K one. It uses it for drawing more accurate letter shapes and more detailed photo areas, not for cramming more "stuff" on screen.

pastito Said:

"Is there a way to enlarge the system fonts, menus and icons without loosing monitor resolution?"

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Troubleshooting the Resolution:

A. Zooming In on an App: [Hold Down: command + Press: "+"]

B. Restart your Mac:

Save what need be, then restart your Mac. You would shut it down, and then power it back on.

C. Single-Out this User:

See what happens when you create a new user and then log into it. If you do not get the same error, then it is an issue with this current user. If you still get the same error, then it is an error with your entire Mac

D. Change the Resolution on Either Screen:

What happens when you change the resolution on the external display? Does that affect the resolution of the builtin display? And what happens when you change the resolution on the builtin display? Does that affect the resolution of the external display.

pastito wrote:

Other operating systems have no issues dealing with this (Linux and Windows)

My understanding is that in the early days, many Windows applications simply ignored the Windows scaling factor, with the result being that they did not play well on hi-DPI screens at all.

On the Mac, a legacy application that couldn't handle a 5120x2880 pixel screen would not see 5120x2880 pixels. The OS would present the illusion that the screen had 2560x1440 pixels. The legacy application, being unaware that it had the option to provide a 5120x2880 level of detail, would not draw at an increased level of detail. Since the OS "owned" the screen hardware, when the legacy application tried to draw on the "2560x1440" pixel screen, the OS could, and did, transparently map that to appropriate updates to the actual 5120x2880 pixel canvas.

Is there a way to enlarge the system fonts, menus and icons without loosing monitor resolution?

Use the Retina modes and stop trying to force the "UI looks like" resolution to be identical to the monitor resolution. Just because the controls on the Mac are set up differently than the ones on Windows and Linux, doesn't mean that Apple gave no thought to their design, or that you are "loosing" [sic] monitor resolution by using them.