How to set the DPI of Java Swing apps on Windows/Linux?
If you have an monitor with a DPI over 150 (such as Macbook Pro), you may also find the problem: the font on the Java Swing app is too small for high DPI monitor, and I cannot change the font size at all ( It ignores the Windows DPI directly, only displaying the very original DPI-->96 ). I can do nothing but changing the screen resolution, which could absolutely make everything blurry on LCD.
Yes, I have a laptop with a high DPI monitor, 15.6' with 1920x1080 resolution, some Java desktop apps look very small on my laptop, such as Matlab, Burpsuite etc. I have been searching the Internet for a very very long time, but still cannot find a method for the problem. I know I can change the JRE fonts through JRE_HOME/lib/font/fontconfig.properties.src, but I cannot find any place to set the default font size or DPI for Java desktop fonts.
Does the problem have no solution? Do you have a high DPI monitor? How do you do with such apps? Does Swing give up high DPI users?
Answer
I'm currently investigating this issue on Windows. Here's what I found:
Most Swing Look & Feels don't support high DPI at all, not even Nimbus even though it's supposed to be scalable. I found some old blog posts saying that Nimbus might eventually offer high DPI scaling, but apparently that never happened.
The one exception is System LAF but its default font is ~10% smaller than the actual system font size, at all DPI settings. Moreover, System must be selected explicitly as described here: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/uiswing/lookandfeel/plaf.html
There's no single scaling factor that you could set in Swing, either. The specific LAF has to provide code to handle scaling. So the best you can do is select System and hope it's good enough.
However, JavaFX does correctly and automatically scale all the way up to 150% on my system. If at all possible, I suggest you use JavaFX to build your GUI.
edit: I made a couple small test programs and took comparison screenshots for various GUI frameworks, Swing themes, and DPI settings. This might be informative for people reading this question: http://kynosarges.org/GuiDpiScaling.html