Solved System tray icons fuzzy/blurry/pixelated

owopeachy · Mar 21, 2024

Hello, been having an odd issue for the last few months that I am at a loss for how to fix, my system tray icons are getting all blurred and fuzzed for no apparent reason:

I have tried a few things, cleared the icon cache with winaerotweaker, reset all winaerotweaker settings, changed my DPI up and down, changed scaling settings in nvidia control panel, but nothing seems to work reliably. The best i got was most of the icons looking normal after some dpi changes, except for the safely remove hardware icon which refused to go back to normal with the others. However even managing this, a restart put them back to blurry mode... Does anyone have a clue whats going on? I'd prefer not to do a fresh windows install just to fix this.

wiganken · Mar 21, 2024

owopeachy said:
system tray icons are getting all blurred and fuzzed

This is not apparent from the photo you posted.
Also, the build number, 22635.3212, that you quote seems odd? Is it a Beta or something?

SlicEnDicE · Mar 21, 2024

This is a known bug that MS has been aware of for for the last 6-7 years but done nothing about it and totally ignored. It affects people with certain resolutions with specific scaling. If someone suggests you to update your drivers or other stuff like that, don't do that, it won't help.

What monitor scaling do you have set? 150%?

SlicEnDicE · Mar 21, 2024

What happens if you restart the Explorer process?

SlicEnDicE · Mar 21, 2024

wiganken said:
This is not apparent from the photo you posted.
Also, the build number, 22635.3212, that you quote seems odd? Is it a Beta or something?

Yes this is beta build

glasskuter · Mar 21, 2024

Per chance, if you use any 3rd party app that alters the GUI, uninstall it and restart to see if it makes a difference.

SlicEnDicE · Mar 21, 2024

Since you're on Beta build, it may take a long time before MS decides to push a patch. A patch exist, because the Major Windows 10 updates had this same bug and it got fixed eventually.

Windows 11 uses same code base as Windows 10 and some bugs reappear every time they start from the base code blocks.

owopeachy · Mar 21, 2024

SlicEnDicE said:
What happens if you restart the Explorer process?

Nothing usually, they remain the same
However, restarting the owner of the icon seems to help
I pushed the dpi right up to max then back down and also changed the font size up and back down, then restarted explorer and that actually fixed the safely remove icon, then restarting outlook, teams, onedrive etc got them back to normal
Remains to be seen if this is a persistent fix though

wiganken said:
This is not apparent from the photo you posted.

Old vs Fixed

SlicEnDicE said:
Since you're on Beta build, it may take a long time before MS decides to push a patch. A patch exist, because the Major Windows 10 updates had this same bug and it got fixed eventually.

Oh dear

Is there any way I can see if my beta branch has an update that pulls it to current release? Windows update shows nothing even in optional updates

wiganken · Mar 21, 2024

owopeachy said:
Old vs Fixed

Ah, now I can see the difference but I don't know any fix.

SlicEnDicE · Mar 21, 2024

owopeachy said:
Oh dear Is there any way I can see if my beta branch has an update that pulls it to current release? Windows update shows nothing even in optional updates

You should have received 22635.3350 already.

Flight Hub

wiganken · Mar 21, 2024

The 'Old vs Fixed' comparison photos makes me think it might be Theme related. Have you tried changing the Theme?

SlicEnDicE · Mar 21, 2024

wiganken said:
The 'Old vs Fixed' comparison photos makes me think it might be Theme related. Have you tried changing the Theme?

There are users who has had a long discussion about this in nVidia forums. According to nVidia Rep. It is an issue in how Windows tray icons are handled. Could very well also be theme related, but I am leaning more towards DPI scaling. In some resolutions the math just does not quite add up right. Most reports I've seen has been on screens with 4k resolution and 125-150% scaling.

owopeachy · Mar 21, 2024

SlicEnDicE said:
There are users who has had a long discussion about this in nVidia forums. According to nVidia Rep. It is an issue in how Windows tray icons are handled. Could very well also be theme related, but I am leaning more towards DPI scaling. In some resolutions the math just does not quite add up right. Most reports I've seen has been on screens with 4k resolution and 125-150% scaling.

Do you have a link to those posts?

SlicEnDicE · Mar 21, 2024

owopeachy said:
Do you have a link to those posts?

~~I had...hold on...I try to find it again.~~

EDIT: Nope...now I don't find it...Google search does not give me same results as before

owopeachy · Mar 22, 2024

Well, in case any other unfortunate user comes across this, setting the DPI to max, changing font size up and then clearing tray icon cache and setting all the sizes back down to normal seems to have resolved this on my system.