How do I decrease my resolution in an Ubuntu 18.04.1 VirtualBox

Question

I have a new Ubuntu VM in VirtualBox and have installed guest additions. Since then full screen has been working, but when I increase the window size the resolution scales accordingly. I am on a Surface Book 2 so the resolution gets up to 3240x2160.

It can take a good bit of time for the window size to load so I want to set the resolution to 1080 or so no matter the window size, or at the very least have it cap at 1080 to hopefully make it load faster when resizing. So far I have been unable to find how to set a resolution cap and am unsure if this is done in the VirtualBox settings or in Ubuntu. Thanks for the help!

You may be looking for the scaled mode of VirtualBox. – Takkat Jan 20 '19 at 19:56 — Takkat, Jan 20 '19 at 19:56

YamiYukiSenpai · Answer 1 · 2019-01-20T19:53:07.183

0

Go to display settings of your VM and set it to 1080p

Edit: You can find it by searching "display". Change it from there. Keep in mind that there will be pillar- and letter-boxing when you do that.

There's also a menu option: View -> Virtual Screen -> Resize to

edited Jan 20 '19 at 19:53

answered Jan 17 '19 at 20:50

YamiYukiSenpai

693

You can find it by searching "display"
Change it from there.

Keep in mind that there will be pillar- and letter-boxing when you do that.
– YamiYukiSenpai Jan 19 '19 at 22:35
There's also a menu option: View -> Virtual Screen -> Resize to – YamiYukiSenpai Jan 19 '19 at 22:40

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 17 '19 at 21:34

Unfortunately, there is no limit to capping the resolution in VirtualBox at this moment. This would be a feature request that you should do through Oracle themselves. I linked the suggestions page below.

https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewforum.php?f=9

How do I decrease my resolution in an Ubuntu 18.04.1 VirtualBox

2 Answers2