[johnh-hn]

> In case of XWayland apps, you'll have to choose between allowing X11 apps to scale themselves (like the old days) or having the compositor scale them (the scaling will be right, even across displays, but it will appear blurry at scales higher than 1x.) I still recommend the Wayland session overall; it gives a much more solid scaling experience, especially with multiple monitors.

I'm wondering if this was the problem I was running into before – it sounds eerily familiar. I never got far enough to explore individual apps outside of preinstalled ones because I couldn't get comfortable enough. I appreciate your response as I wasn't aware of the different session types.

[jchw]

Yeah, it probably has something to do with this. In X11 sessions, the display server does not typically handle scaling. Instead, the desktop environments provide scaling preferences to UI toolkits that then do the scaling themselves. In Wayland, the display server does handle scaling.

In both X11 and Wayland, you should usually see most applications following your scaling preferences nowadays. In Wayland sessions, you can ensure that applications always appear at the correct size, though at the cost of "legacy" applications appearing blurry. This behavior is configured in the Display Settings in KDE Plasma.

Also possibly useful: if you like the KDE Plasma session, it has a built-in magnifier; just hold Ctrl+Meta and use the scroll wheel.

[johnh-hn]

> Yeah, it probably has something to do with this. In X11 sessions, the display server does not typically handle scaling. Instead, the desktop environments provide scaling preferences to UI toolkits that then do the scaling themselves. In Wayland, the display server does handle scaling.

Presumably this leads to a more unified scaling experience. This was one thing I was concerned about before, as it didn't seem that way. That's a solid improvement on its own.

> Also possibly useful: if you like the KDE Plasma session, it has a built-in magnifier; just hold Ctrl+Meta and use the scroll wheel.

This is useful yes, along with the rest of your comments. Thanks for your help.