I am using a 15-inch 4K high-DPI laptop with Whonix Workstation (LXQt). By default, everything on the screen appears extremely small, including text, icons, and interface elements.
Before applying the fixes below, I first enabled unrestricted admin mode so I would have full root access. This involves rebooting the Whonix-Workstation VM, selecting “REMOVE user-sysmaint-split | enable unrestricted admin mode” from the GRUB menu, authenticating as sysmaint if prompted, confirming by typing “yes,” and allowing the system to remove the split-user setup before booting normally again. After that, I logged back into my regular user account. This step made configuration easier, but it is generally considered a bad security practice and reduces Whonix’s security model, so it should only be done if you understand the risks.
Here is how I fixed the scaling issue:
1. Enable automatic screen resizing
Go to: Start → System Maintenance Panel → Dynamic Resolution
Press Enter to enable Dynamic Resolution
This allows the VM display to properly match the window size.
2. Increase UI scaling (DPI scaling)
Go to: Start → Preferences → Display → DPI Scaling
Set the scale to your preferred value (for example, 2.0 or 2.5)
This makes all interface elements scale uniformly and correctly.
3. Make the scaling persist across reboots
By default, the DPI scaling resets after reboot. To make it persistent, create a user systemd service that reapplies the scaling at login.
Create the service file:
~/.config/systemd/user/wlr-scale.service
With the following contents:
[Unit]
Description=Set display scale
After=graphical-session.target
[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/bin/bash -c ‘sleep 5; wlr-randr --output Virtual-1 --scale 2.0’
[Install]
WantedBy=default.target
Then enable it:
systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user enable wlr-scale.service
After this, the scaling will automatically apply each time you log in.