Fixes for TwinCAT display issues
Before 3.1.4026.x the TwinCAT XAE and related tools such as route manager do not display correctly on 4K monitors. Unfortunately many monitors since 2018 are 4K. Thankfully there is a simple fix.
After following the below instructions to disable DPI awareness, dialogs that are part of TwinCAT or the Remote Manager may appear slightly lower resolution or blurry, however the components will be sized correctly and readable, which is not always true without applying this fix.
After installing XAE Shell or TwinCAT 3 integrated into Visual Studio, you may see that many tables are compressed and various dialogs and other artifacts are rendered incorrectly.
| Before fix (with DPI awareness enabled) | After fix (with DPI awareness disabled) |
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After digging into this a bit, I finally determined that this is due to TwinCAT using Codesys underneath, and Codesys using old WinForms components for everything.
Searching for "Windows forms high DPI display issue in visual studio" reveals a number of articles. Including this link from Microsoft Disable DPI-awareness to fix HDPI / scaling issues with Windows Forms Designer in Visual Studio and Using the WinForms designer on high‑DPI systems. I found the second solution most helpful and repeat the instructions below.
If you are using TwinCAT XAE Shell, run the disable-dpi-awareness-TcXaeShell.reg script (repeated below), or manually edit this key in the Windows registry.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options\TcXaeShell.exe]
"dpiAwareness"=dword:00000000
To revert, run the enable-dpi-awareness-TcXaeShell.reg script (repeated below), or manually edit this key in the Windows registry.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options\TcXaeShell.exe]
"dpiAwareness"=dword:00000001
If you are using TwinCAT XAE integrated into Visual Studio, run the disable-dpi-awareness-devenv.reg script (repeated below), or manually edit this key in the Windows registry.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options\devenv.exe]
"dpiAwareness"=dword:00000000
To revert, run the enable-dpi-awareness-devenv.reg script (repeated below), or manually edit this key in the Windows registry.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options\devenv.exe]
"dpiAwareness"=dword:00000001
Similarly, to fix the Remote Manager dialog, run the disable-dpi-awareness-TcAmsRemoteMgr.reg script (repeated below), or manually edit this key in the Windows registry.
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options\TcAmsRemoteMgr.exe]
"dpiAwareness"=dword:00000000
To revert, run the enable-dpi-awareness-TcAmsRemoteMgr.reg script (repeated below), or manually edit this key in the Windows registry:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options\TcAmsRemoteMgr.exe]
"dpiAwareness"=dword:00000001