How To Change Resolution on Raspberry Pi

A Raspberry Pi can often be used with all sorts of displays ranging from tiny portable screens to extra large TVs. Sometimes they are run without a physical screen but have a graphical display that can be accessed remotely through VNC for example. Changing the resolution on a Raspberry Pi is usually easy. This can be done:

From the GUI
From a terminal

How do I change screen resolution in Pixel ( Raspbian )

Click on the Raspberry Pi Menu on the taskbar. The exact names for each menu item may be slightly different for different versions of Raspbian.

Go to:

Preferences
Screen Configuration

This will bring up the Screen Layout Editor.

Go to the following:

Configure
Screens
Virtual1
Resolution
Select the resolution you want.
Click the green check button
Click OK on the popup

From a terminal - How To Change Resolution on Raspberry Pi

TIP - Hold the shift key during boot. This should restore default settings.

Using raspi-config


sudo raspi-config

Select:

7 Advanced Options
A5 Resolution
Pick the resolution you want

Using a config file

You are going to need to specify either CEA or DMT for the hdmi_group variable. CEA is usually used for TVs and DMT is usually used for monitors. For the CEA set hdmi_group=1. For the DMT set hdmi_group=2. You will also need to set a resolution mode using the hdmi_mode variable.


sudo nano /boot/config.txt

Here is an example showing how to set a monitor (DMT) to 1920×1080, 16:9, 60hz:


hdmi_group=2
hdmi_mode=82

Here is an example showing how to set a TV (CEA) to 1920×1080, 16:9, 60hz:


hdmi_group=1
hdmi_mode=16

See this document for more details on using the config.txt file for video settings. It has a table with values that can be used for the hdmi_group varialbe.

Once you have your settings in place, reboot the system:


sudo reboot

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