Hello there, this is Gary from MacMost.com, your trusted companion for all things tech. You've probably experienced the frustration of trying to read something on your screen, right? Well, you might just want to adjust the resolution of your display. MacMost.com is a labor of love, supported by over a thousand passionate supporters. You can find out more about our Patreon campaign at MacMost.com/patreon. Join us, and you'll get exclusive content and course discounts.

The Great Screen Resolution Debate: A Matter of Personal Comfort

This is a topic that sparks more controversy than a political election, but why? It's just a setting that you can tweak. It's true that someone else's preference might differ from yours, but people's vision varies greatly. Some folks have 20/20 vision and can effortlessly view screens at any resolution. Others, on the other hand, might struggle to see computer screens even with glasses.

The Art of Adjusting Resolution: A Tutorial Tip

Now, my screen usually looks like this when I'm doing tutorials. But I wouldn't use my screen at this resolution. I'm actually using a resolution where the screen is 1280 by 720, which at 27 inches makes everything very large. But if I made it any smaller, it would be challenging to see some of the items, like the menu items here at the top of the screen when you're viewing this as a video on a webpage.

The Resolution Dilemma: A Performance and Comfort Showdown

If you go to System Settings and then to Displays, you can select your display here and see just five options. There is a default option, which is actually twice the resolution that I'm using now. That's 1440 vertically. Because I'm using the Apple Studio display, which is 2880 pixels high. So, a perfect retina display is 4X, which means that I'll have 1440. But I'm actually using something that isn't even listed here as my screen resolution. So, at 720 high just for these tutorials. I don't work that way normally. Normally, I would work usually at the default, which looks like this.

The Ultimate Guide to Adjusting Screen Resolution: A Comfort Comes First

What you should set your screen to really depends on how well you can see things. So, if these menu items look too small, then you want to go something to the left, like this. You can see how it makes the menu items larger. Or even larger if you need to. You can actually get some more options than just the five here by using the Control Key, clicking, and you have Show List. I've got more than the five different options there. As a matter of fact, you can go all the way to the maximum which makes everything super tiny and almost impossible for anybody to see the menu items here at the top. You can go to the default here. You can choose the one I use when I shoot my videos, or you can choose something in-between like this.

The Performance vs Comfort: A Decision You Should Make Yourself

Now, note when you're using anything except the default, you're going to see the message, "Using the scale resolution may affect performance." May being the primary term there. For most things, it's not going to affect the performance at all, especially if you have a newer Mac. If you're using Pages to do word processing, then it is not really going to matter performance-wise. Maybe if you're playing a game, or if you're working with 3D graphics, or really large Photoshop documents, things like that, maybe then you might see a slight performance change. But what's more important? Being able to see what you're doing or getting a little bit more performance out of your Mac's GPU's.

The Independent Control of Interface and Content: A Resolution Showdown

Also, notice how easy it is to change these. So, if you do have a particular app that seems like it works a little bit better at default, well, then change your screen to default when using that app. But otherwise, leave it somewhere else where your eyes are more comfortable. Don't ever let somebody else tell you what resolution you should have your screen set to. I'm not going to tell you that any of these are better than any of the others. They are all there for a reason because each one maybe the best for certain people with different vision capabilities and preferences.

The Resolution Exploration: A Call to Action

Now, also keep in mind that just because you changed the resolution here, so perhaps you make the menu items bigger, so perhaps in the Finder, you can see the items here in the left sidebar, or the names of folders and files better, doesn't mean that you have to have the same size inside the apps. For instance, I have Pages open here. So, let's say I've got the resolution set to this and this looks great. But, if I go to a higher resolution, like the default, now this looks too small. Well, you can go and zoom in here to make the text bigger for Pages. So, you still have complete control over the size of things inside the content of a document. The same thing for webpages. This is what it looks like here but let's say if I went to a different resolution, like this, if this is too big, I could always use View, Zoom In or Out, or the keyboard shortcuts for that, to change the resolution of what I see in the browser.

The Resolution Limitations: A Reason to Upgrade

Keep in mind that what you see here for different resolutions is really going to depend on how many pixels your screen has. I know a lot of people still choose cheap 1440 screens for their Macs. When you do so, you're not getting that many pixels. It's considerably less pixels than say a 4K screen. So, there is only going to be so many choices here before your at the maximum resolution, usually of 2560 by 1440. A 4K screen will give you more options, and of course, a 5K screen gives you the maximum amount of options like I've got here. But, you are definitely limiting yourself when you are getting a 1440 screen, which is one of the reasons I don't recommend them. Even if it looks okay for most reasons, it does stop you from, perhaps, going to a higher resolution at times you may want that.

The Final Thoughts: A Call to Exploration