When having a better display backfires: fixing 'blurry' VLC in Hyprland

Skip to the main content I dual booted to Arch Linux few months ago and started running Hyprland on it. The experience is out of the world. I just love how I can open any number of windows without bothering with layout, navigate between them without lifting a finger off my keyboard, and when it gets messy just open a new workspace. So naturally I have been trying to slowly shift most of my work from Windows to my Linux setup. This weekend I decided to finally watch the movie I had been wanting to for a long time. I thought why not use Arch for that? I already had VLC installed, but I had never used it. When I opened VLC, I noticed it was all blurry. So I spent my afternoon solving this issue. I felt the issue was pretty interesting so I thought of writing a short blog about it. Background To understand why a simple video player looks blurry, we need some technical context: 1. HiDPI (High Dots Per Inch) Displays This is the physical reality of your screen. Traditionally, computer screen