Your display’s resolution determines the size of text and objects on your screen. By default, your Mac automatically uses the best resolution for the display. While it’s best to use the default resolution, you can manually set the resolution to make text and objects appear larger on your screen, or adjust it to make text and objects appear smaller so you have more space on your screen.
Set the resolution for your primary display
- On your Mac, choose Apple menu > System Settings, then click Displays in the sidebar. (You may need to scroll down.)
- Select a resolution.
- If you see a thumbnail view of the available resolutions, move the pointer over the thumbnails to see the resolution sizes, then click the one you want.
- To see the available resolutions as a list, Control-click the thumbnail view and choose Show List. Then click the resolution you want.To switch back to the thumbnail view, Control-click the list view and choose Show Thumbnails.
To always see available resolutions as a list, click Advanced, then turn on “Show resolutions as list.”
Set the resolution for a connected display
If you have more than one display, additional resolution options are available after the other display is connected.
- On your Mac, choose Apple menu > System Settings, then click Displays in the sidebar. (You may need to scroll down.)
- Select the display you want to adjust, then select the resolution you want to use.You may be able to turn on “Show all resolutions” to see additional resolutions for the display.
Depending on how you adjust the resolution, some app windows may not fit entirely on the screen. Using a scaled resolution may affect performance.