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Enable HiDPI Display Modes In OS X Lion
Mar 11, 2025
A how-to on enabling HIDPI modes in Lion.
View Video Transcript
0:10
hey everyone today I'm going to show you
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how you can enable High DPI display
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modes in Mac OS 10 line now this is
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something similar to how the iPhone uses
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the Rena display with the doubled
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resolution so basically there's this
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option that you have to tweak and once
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you do that you'll be able to use high
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DPI display modes in line now of course
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at this point since we don't have Retina
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Display Max everything is twice as large
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on the screen so it's not exactly a very
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practical thing at this point but it's
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really something neat to try because it
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is kind of neat to see what Apple's
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doing in the way of making Retina
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Display Max so don't expect to get a lot
0:50
of functionality out of this this is
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more of just a neat little tweak you can
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try out so the first thing we're going
0:56
to need is xcode from the Mac App Store
0:59
so if you go up to to your app logo menu
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and select App Store you want to go over
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to the search field and type in xcode
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and you can see X code right here and I
1:09
can select this now it is free in the
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Mac App Store but the biggest problem is
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that it is 1.68 GB so it's not something
1:19
you're going to really want to download
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and expect to have finished if you're on
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a slow wireless network and if you have
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a limited data connection it's just
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something you want to think about before
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you go through the trouble of
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downloading xcode so once you download
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xcode you'll be given an installer and
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you'll be able to install xcode and
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that's a process that I've already done
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it does take a little bit of time and
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it's pretty self-explanatory so it's
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nothing I really need to cover here so
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after xcode is installed you can open up
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a new finder window and from there go to
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Macintosh HD and then there'll be a new
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developer folder right here and you can
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open that up and in here there'll be an
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applications folder so go into that and
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then from there a graphics tools folder
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and then in this Graphics tools folder
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there's a whole bunch of different
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Graphics based apps but what you'll want
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to do is open up quartz debug when you
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open it up you're not really going to
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see anything on the screen except for
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this little window that'll be floating
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right here but if you go up to the
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window menu under quartz debug and you
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select UI
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resolution this little window will pop
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up right down here and all you need to
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do is check this enable High
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DPI display modes option then you're
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going to get this message that you
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should log out for your changes to take
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effect and in fact you have to log out
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all users that are on your computer for
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this to work so I'm going to cut the
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video right here and log out and then
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I'll log back in and we'll go in and see
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how it works so now that I've logged out
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and logged back in what I can do now is
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go up to the Apple logo menu and select
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system preferences now in system
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preferences all I have to do is go to
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the displays tab now what you can see
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here is in addition to the normal
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displays I have a couple different High
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DPI modes and you can see it's in
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parenthesis right afterwards so let's
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try something like 1280 x 720 High
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DP so you can see here now this is the
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1280 x 720 High DPI mode running on my
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iMac here and you can see that
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everything looks a lot clearer uh it it
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just overall looks nicer and uh
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everything is very high resolution so if
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you imagine a Mac with the double the
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resolution of this everything would
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display at the normal size as you would
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see on a Mac today now there are some
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flaws of this as you can see in my menu
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bar not all the icons support the 2x
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resolution uh most of the Native OS 10
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ones do as you can see here like volume
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and the time but most of the third party
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apps do not this is also true with some
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some graphics like the iCloud logo in
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system preferences is not at the 2x
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resolution While most everything else is
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and similarly if you go up to the app
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logo menu and select about this Mac you
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can see that the app logo is not high
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resolution either and this is a pretty
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common Trend with most applications as
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you can see the dock looks very nice at
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this resolution uh but things like
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Stacks do
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not a lot of the Native applications do
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tend to pretty decent such as calculator
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it looks actually incredibly nice at
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this 2x resolution other applications
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like iel look generally awful at this 2x
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resolution as you can tell that none of
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the user interface elements other than
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the text supports the 2x display modes
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so there's how you can enable High DPI
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display modes on your Mac running OS 10
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line and once again this is not
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something that is good for day-to-day
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use uh it's more just of a a fun thing
5:00
to try out kind of get a look into what
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Apple might be doing in the future for
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Retina Display Max as always if you have
5:06
anything you'd like to see me do a how
5:07
to on make sure to send me an email I
5:09
hope you found this video useful and
5:10
thank you for
5:16
watching
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