You have a high-resolution screen. Studio is not really designed for such screens. If you cannot live with small buttons (not a big deal, if you ask me), use the settings in Windows to magnify the view. You might also want to check this app: Change Scaling Behaviour - Language Solutions | SDL

Thanks, Jerzy, for your prompt response. For your information, I am using Windows 10 and my laptop is indeed one of the newer ones with the 11th generation version of i7. So, as a result, I did not seem to find many of the things mentioned in the steps outlined in the Article referenced in your message. I am not too sure why the latest version of SDL would not be addressing these problems associated with installing SDL Professional in newer versions of laptops. This is a bit disappointing to me considering just how expensive this version of SDL Studio is. I really find it very difficult to believe that this will be the reason for my problem with this software in this day and age. I hope someone from SDL will come forward and prove this wrong.

Believe it or not, it is. I am using a MS Surface with a quite high resolution screen (12") and have set my Windows 10 not to magnify anything. The icons and text of Studio GUI is tiny, but I do not care. BTW, this applies to all versions of Studio, not only Pro.

If you really cannot live with this small icons, you have to use Windows to help you. Go to "All Settings" in Windows by clicking here:

Then chose this:

You should see this:

Chose System:

Use the marked settings to change scaling.

Or buy a laptop with a screen of maximal Full HD resolution (1920 × 1080 pixel).

Thank you very much for your help. Very much appreciated.

Hi Simon Kemisho,
I also have to scale my screens to use Studio. I tried many times to make myself believe it is not a big deal. But it obviously is for me. Even 125% scaling is not enough for comfortable work. With 100% scaling on my 22" displays, 1920×1080, I always get microscopic text with plenty of empty space I can't use.


Only 150% scaling gives an acceptable result. However, this approach has its drawbacks: scaling affects most other applications, plus scaling affects Studio itself too. Once you apply scaling, you may find some features/buttons disappeared or still visible but non-functional.


This is just for your information. Scaling is still a better choice [at least for me] but you have to be prepared to compromise.
You may try 125%. This will keep some (but not all) features in their place. However 125% is still not enough for me though.

Simon Kemisho

Simon Kemisho said:

I am not too sure why the latest version of SDL would not be addressing these problems associated with installing SDL Professional in newer versions of laptops.

You are of course quite right that this needs to be addressed.  It's not acceptable for users, especially those who are not familiar with the software and need to be able to see everything on the screen properly, or if they have some sight difficulties.

The work to resolve this has been ongoing for some time and with each release a little more of the application has been rewritten using a more appropriate technology that will support resizing with more modern screen displays.  If you were to compare Trados Studio 2017 with 2019 and now 2021 you can see the improvements.

It's also good that you share your experiences in here because an Enterprise like RWS (fSDL) don't get all the latest hardware improvements which are more accessible to a freelance translator for example (upgrading thousands of computers every time there is something "better" on the market doesn't happen!).  So when we see them in here it's a good prompt to see if we need to at least invest in one or two of the latest machines for the development teams to ensure we are keeping on top of our users likely requirements, and so we can try to support them as best we can.

In the meantime thank you for your patience, and for reporting your findings in here.

Simon Kemisho

Simon Kemisho said:

I am not too sure why the latest version of SDL would not be addressing these problems associated with installing SDL Professional in newer versions of laptops.

You are of course quite right that this needs to be addressed.  It's not acceptable for users, especially those who are not familiar with the software and need to be able to see everything on the screen properly, or if they have some sight difficulties.

The work to resolve this has been ongoing for some time and with each release a little more of the application has been rewritten using a more appropriate technology that will support resizing with more modern screen displays.  If you were to compare Trados Studio 2017 with 2019 and now 2021 you can see the improvements.

It's also good that you share your experiences in here because an Enterprise like RWS (fSDL) don't get all the latest hardware improvements which are more accessible to a freelance translator for example (upgrading thousands of computers every time there is something "better" on the market doesn't happen!).  So when we see them in here it's a good prompt to see if we need to at least invest in one or two of the latest machines for the development teams to ensure we are keeping on top of our users likely requirements, and so we can try to support them as best we can.

In the meantime thank you for your patience, and for reporting your findings in here.

Thanks for your response and look forward, hopefully in the very near future, to have this problem resolved.

Thank you Paul for your patient and detailed explanation. I just received an update that has aggravated the situation even worse. Now I have giant padlock icons :D

Update: I switched to 125% scaling. It feels better now. Thank you. 
But I am going to upgrade my hardware anyway. Could you (or anybody else) please suggest a good PC monitor 22" to 25" that fits Studio best? A monitor that I can just plug and play smoothly. A monitor that you know for sure that it works fine for Studio with default settings (100% scaling). Any idea?

I am using 2 ASUS 27" screens. Here are some screenshots to show how Studio looks like there

This is quite small still, in my opinion. Let us hope SDL/RWS treats this with some urgency. One can glean

from this just how widespread this problem could be among those using newer screen resolutions.

Please take into account, that the screens are 27". And TBH I do not need all the menu item to be in big font, I know them all good enough.

Thank you Jerzy for your suggestion. This actually means that even screen size won't change anything. Be it 22" or 27", still wasting a huge amount of space even in the header area where the active project name is displayed. Little SDL_Trados_Studio_ProjectName with 3x wider empty space below it...

Incredible. 83% of waste space. Never thought of that before until I painted it.

I will not argue, that this could be optimized. But OTOH I have so many other construction sites of bigger importance in my life, so I do not really care about this yellow places. You could fill it with letters or flowers, I really do not care. What I need are the analysis results, and these are much better usable in an exported Excel file. You can also quite clearly read these in the files or projects view. What I really do care about ist the Editor view, where my working elements are nicely scaled to a size I can comfortably read both at home on two 27" monitors or underway with my MS Surface—one 12" screen or, when not on the road, plus another 13" UHD screen. I work in Editor, all other views are just for special purpose, so I do not pay so much attention and do not lose my temper on those.

Stepan Konev

Stepan Konev said:

Incredible. 83% of waste space. Never thought of that before until I painted it.

Perhaps you can put your design skills to good use and try this application?

https://community.sdl.com/product-groups/translationproductivity/w/customer-experience/5519/reports-viewer-plus

This app has many advantages over the out of the box reports view, one of them is that you can create your own reports.  You do need a little knowledge around stylesheets and XSLT, but armed with that you would be able to create reports that looked exactly as you liked them!

But the Editor view is just the same. Half bar is empty with microscopic captions that you have to 'know them all good enough' by heart.

Are you serious? Do you really think I am talking about the Report view only? I mention it just because it is much more representative. However, the same applies to any other view in Studio. If I was wrong, why this is not only me who is asking these questions for years.