Running on HiDPI screen

Running Bisq on a HiDPI screen (2k, 4k, etc) with default settings often leads to small text.

This article covers how to fix this issue on Linux.

Command-line fix

Adjust scaling with the following prefix:

JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS="-Dglass.gtk.uiScale=1.4" /opt/bisq/bin/Bisq

/opt/bisq/bin/Bisq is the default application directory on Linux. If you run another operating system, you'll need to replace that path with the one for your OS.

You can adjust the scaling factor as you wish, of course, and add any runtime options for Bisq as well.

GUI fix

To be able to launch the fix by double clicking an icon, rather than running a command in CLI, you can edit the launcher file to run, instead of the Bisq app directly, a shell script which injects said fix.

1. Create a text file (for example /opt/bisq/Bisq-runner.sh) containing the following code:

#!/bin/bash
JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS="-Dglass.gtk.uiScale=1.4" /opt/bisq/bin/Bisq

2. Make it executable:

chmod +x /opt/bisq/Bisq-runner.sh

3. Edit the launcher file (/opt/bisq/Bisq.desktop and/or /usr/share/applications/Bisq.desktop) by opening it in a text editor and modifying the Exec line like follows:

Exec=/opt/bisq/Bisq-runner.sh

Historical template from the 14 October 2026 archive · source