Possible to stretch games that appear at a different resolution (4:3) than the screen (16:9)?

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Maci92 Author

Level 1

18 points

Possible to stretch games that appear at a different resolution (4:3) than the screen (16:9)?

I have a Mac mini M2.

I like to play some older games which are designed for a 4:3 resolution.

My monitor however got a 16:9 resolution.

So I end up having black bars on the left and right side of the application window.

But I would prefer to have these games stretched over the full monitor, even if they then appear more wide than they usually are.

I was able to do that on my Linux (I just recently switched to Mac) and I'm curious if there's a similar option to achieve this behavior on Mac, too?

Mac mini, macOS 14.4

Posted on Aug 19, 2024 4:54 AM

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Answer 1

OldGoat67

Level 2

434 points

Aug 19, 2024 1:04 PM in response to Maci92

Maybe, Maci92… if you hold down the “option” key when you go to “displays” ( system settings > displays) you should get a bunch of resolutions including native for display… otherwise I dunno… you may be able to mess around with the game’s resolution to get a 16:9 rather than a 4:3 display ( so called “widescreen fix” otherwise you may have to pay for “SwitchResX” from madrau software… which games ? If you try typing in the title of the game + widescreen in Google you might find some kind of “fix” or “hack” to make the game run in widescreen mode… again I don’t know which games you want to run in widescreen ( 16:9) mode… I used to go into the game’s files and figure out how to get it to run something close to widescreen, which involved a little editing… that’s just me though

john b

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Answer 2

Maci92 Author

Level 1

18 points

Aug 19, 2024 1:15 PM in response to OldGoat67

Unfortunately the games I currently tried (Settlers 2 and Settlers 4) both have only 4:3 resolutions.

I found a widescreen fix for Settlers 4, but it did not work correctly as some parts of the screen are not visible anymore if I use that one.

In "displays" settings I have my native resolution (1920x1080) selected. If I change it to a 4:3 resolution (e.g. 1024x768) I get the black borders even on desktop.

I'll have a look at SwitchResX.

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