Application user interface too large | Windows

If you find the Adobe Illustrator CC 2014 or Adobe InDesign CC 2014 interfaces large and difficult to use, follow the steps below to adjust your display settings.

Solution: Reduce the Windows scale setting to 100%.

1. Go to the Control Panel on Windows.
2. Select the Appearance and Personalization tab.
3. Choose Make text and other items larger or smaller under the Display section.
4. Select Smaller - 100% from the three options available.

Add custom Environmental Variable value

Windows scale settings affect the overall Windows screen display. You can add an Environmental Variable value to control only settings for InDesign CC 2014 and Illustrator CC 2014—the overall Windows display will not be affected.

1. Right-click the computer on your desktop and choose Properties.
2. In the System window, click Advanced System Settings in the left pane.
3. In the System Properties window, select the Advanced tab and click Environment Variables.
4. Click New in the System Variables section. You can also set it in the User Variables section, if you want to keep the change limited to the currently logged-in user.
5. In the New System Variable dialog box, enter UI_SCALE_FACTOR in the Variable name field.
6. Enter 1 in the Variable value field.
7. Click OK.

Additional information

After the CC 2014 release of InDesign and Illustrator, these applications' user interfaces adapted to operating systems' scale settings. It used to trigger at >=125% with the user interface getting too large. However, with windows scaling less than 125%, it launches at 100% scaling, as in Illustrator and InDesign.