Setting display resolution and DPI scaling via Command Line - Windows

Windows remembers screen position and orientation when displays are disconnected and reconnected, but it doesn’t adjust the built-in laptop display’s scaling. This means you have to manually change the scaling in display settings each time.

Strangely, Windows doesn’t provide a built-in command-line method to adjust display scaling. I tried modifying the registry directly, but while I could set the scaling value, I couldn’t get Windows to refresh the display for the change to take effect.

Then I found NirCmd, which can reset the display but not change scaling. So, I combined both methods—registry edits and a display reset—to make it work.

You will need to find the monitor ID in your registry - open (win+r) regedit.exe and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\PerMonitorSettings\ - in my case it is LEN81980_00_07E2_93^D67EB3619EDA5B5DF73E8171F6077798

You'll need to first find your displays recommended scaling, or zero index, which is determined by Windows - it is NOT 100%!. For higher DPI displays, this will usually be 200%. You'll see in the script below dword 0xfffffffc which represents -4 - 200% less levels of 25% (175% > 150% > 125% > 100%), resulting in 100%.

Below are two .bat scripts to set scaling to 100% and 200%. You can modify them for other scaling levels.

@echo off
cd /d %~dp0
reg add "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\PerMonitorSettings\LEN81980_00_07E2_93^D67EB3619EDA5B5DF73E8171F6077798" /v DpiValue /t REG_DWORD /d 0xfffffffc /f
nircmd setprimarydisplay 1

Here, it sets the dword to 0x00000000 - this is the displays default scaling,

@echo off
cd /d %~dp0
reg add "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\PerMonitorSettings\LEN81980_00_07E2_93^D67EB3619EDA5B5DF73E8171F6077798" /v DpiValue /t REG_DWORD /d 0x00000000 /f
nircmd setprimarydisplay 1

On higher res displays, this will result in the display scaling being set to 100%.

And, for completeness, here is 225% (+1):

@echo off
cd /d %~dp0
reg add "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\PerMonitorSettings\LEN81980_00_07E2_93^D67EB3619EDA5B5DF73E8171F6077798" /v DpiValue /t REG_DWORD /d 0x00000001 /f
nircmd setprimarydisplay 1

Hopefully you can work it out and make use. You'll need to save the above scripts as .bat files and you may have problems downloading them directly here, so I recommend you copy and paste to a file locally.

You can get NirCmd here: https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/nircmd.html