When you use a Windows 10 PC, you may find yourself in the strange situation that some windows look blurry but others do not, especially when these windows or applications contain text. These problems are more common than you might think and, in fact, Windows 10 sometimes detects and guides you through the process to fix them, but there are times when it does not. In any case, we are going to tell you why this happens and what you should do to solve it .
In many cases, when Windows detects that certain applications or windows look blurry, a message will appear indicating this and will take you to the configuration options to try to solve the problem. The bad part of this is that the Windows guide stays there and does not tell you what to do to fix the problem, so we are going to tell you about it.
Why are some windows blurry?
As we said at the beginning, the problem of blurred windows or applications -especially when they contain text- is quite frequent, but fortunately the solution is simple as you will see below. This can happen when you have just installed the operating system, when you have several monitors connected to the computer, when you accidentally modify the configuration of the screen or when you install new drivers for the graphics card.
In most cases Windows will detect it and a message like this will appear.
And the problem is that it just opens the screen configuration options but it doesn’t tell you what to change to fix the problem, so let’s see what the possible solutions are.
How to fix the problem
The first thing you should check are the scaling options on the screen, and for this you must click on the Start button and access the Settings menu (the gear icon). Once in configuration, select System and then the first option, Display. Once in this section, look for the button “Advanced scaling settings” and press it.
Here you will find an option that says “Let Windows try to fix applications so they are not blurry.” Just turn this option on and check again if the windows that were giving you problems are still blurry.
If after doing this you still see some blurry windows or applications, you can try to configure the options in the application individually. Find the shortcut icon of the problematic application and right-click on it, then select Properties. In the window that opens, go to the Compatibility tab and then click on the “Change high DPI settings” button.
In the window that opens, check the first option called “Use this option to correct scaling problems in this program instead of Settings”. In the same window, at the bottom you will see “Invalidation of scaling with high DPI values”. Check it and select “Application” from the drop-down menu. Finally, click OK on both windows and see if it is still blurry now.
If your problem is not exactly that the windows are blurred but rather only the texts, the problem may also have to do with the scaling, but that of the texts. To check it, navigate to the Start menu -> Settings -> System -> Screen as before, but in this case you must look for the “Scale and distribution” section, just above the button you clicked in the previous section, and check that you have the Recommended option selected or, failing that, select the 100% option to display the proportions for which the application has been designed.
If you still see blurry text, there are more things you can do like adjust ClearType text, and the easiest way to access these settings is to left click on the Start menu and directly type ClearType .
A window will open when you access the “Adjust ClearType text” application, in which you must select “Activate ClearType” and click on the Next button.
Then a screen will appear indicating your monitor model, and the system will check to see if the monitor is using its native resolution (since otherwise you would also see blurred windows, although in this case they would be all and not just some) . Press next to go to the next section.
Next, a five-step wizard will appear in which they will show you some example texts and you will have to select the one that, according to your point of view, is the one that looks less blurry of the two.
This, as we said, is repeated five times until a final screen appears indicating that you have finished optimizing the text on your monitor, and you will have to click Finish to apply the changes you have made. Once done, check again if the windows are still blurry or not.
Updating the drivers always helps
Finally, you might see some blurry windows due to the graphics drivers, so keeping them up-to-date always helps. If you have an NVIDIA or AMD graphics, make use of their own software to get the latest specific updates for your graphics card, and if you use an integrated Intel GPU you can do the same but you will have to go to their download web page.
In the latter case, you would not need it, since Windows is capable of downloading the drivers automatically. To do this, right-click on the Start menu and then go to Device Manager.
Once there, display the Display adapters menu to see its graph (in the example there is a dedicated one from NVIDIA, in which case it is better to use the brand’s software, but it is useful to illustrate what you would have to do with an integrated GPU from Intel). Right-click on it, and click Update Driver.
A very simple wizard will appear that will update the drivers automatically. Now you will have to restart the PC and check again if the windows that were giving you problems are still blurry.