Reveal All Possible Screen Resolutions for a Display Connected to a Mac

This works to reveal additional screen resolution choices for any display connected to a modern Mac, it also applies to all modern versions of OS X:

1. Open System Preferences from the Apple menu in OS X.
2. Click on Display.
3. Under the Display tab, hold down the OPTION / ALT key while you press on the Scaled button alongside Resolution to reveal all available screen resolution options for the display.
4. Choose the resolution desired from the complete list of available screen resolutions, then close out of System Preferences as usual.

You must hold the Option key when clicking on Scaled to reveal all possible screen resolutions for the external display(s), and if you have multiple external displays in use on a Mac, you’ll want to hold the option key when choosing Scaled and selecting a resolution for each connected display.

For example, here’s the default selection of Scaled resolutions shown on a particularly 24″ external display connected to a MacBook Pro:

Now after holding down the Option key while clicking on the Scaled radio button, many additional screen resolutions are revealed as available to use:

Though these additional choices become available, they may not necessarily look right, and they may not render correctly, so just because they’re shown as options does not necessarily indicate you should use them for that particular screen.

Note this does not apply to Retina displays, where changing the resolution is a bit differentand is only offered in scaled views rather than numerical resolutions anyway.

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