How to set a custom scaled screen resolution on MacOS Ventura

Learn how to set a Custom Screen Resolution on MacOS Ventura (since October 2022).

For about three years now, I’ve been using an external monitor with my Macbook Pro.

I have a Phillips 43″ 4K display. It was top quality a few years ago and now there’s better newer models, but I’m reluctant to upgrade, because it was expensive and I want to get the most value out of it.

There are 8,000+ monitors for sale on Amazon. 
That’s a lot of different screen resolutions.

Fortunately, there’s a solution.

The upgrade to Big Sur

After nine months working from home, I upgraded to MacOS Big Sur.

But something was off, it seems that Apple has reduced the options for screen resolution. And it was a problem, because on such a big monitor, everything was big.

My monitor is huge, so should my screen resolution.

The default options

Out of the box, you can see four recommended resolutions, scaling from Larger Text to More Space.

macOS Ventura

macOS Big Sur & High Sierra

The four recommended resolutions scale from Larger Text to More Space.

Fixing it

There’s an easy was to customise your resolution.

  1. Open System Preferences
  2. Choose Displays
  3. macOS Big Sur & High Sierra: Hold down the Option key and click on Scaled option
    macOS Ventura: Hold down the Option key and click on ‘Larger text’ or ‘More space’

Note: This doesn’t seem to work for in-built MacBook screens, and for some external monitors that don’t support a custom scaled resolution.

Newer Macs with MacOS Ventura:

Older Macs:

Hold down Option key while clicking on Scaled to customise the resolution.
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