How to get DPI scale for all screens?

Question

I need to get the DPI scale, as set from Control Panel > Display, for each of the screens connected to the computer, even those that do not have a WPF window open. I have se

Answer 1

I found a way to get the dpi’s with the WinAPI. As first needs references to System.Drawing and System.Windows.Forms. It is possible to get the monitor handle with the WinAPI from a point on the display area - the Screen class can give us this points. Then the GetDpiForMonitor function returns the dpi of the specified monitor.

public static class ScreenExtensions
{
    public static void GetDpi(this System.Windows.Forms.Screen screen, DpiType dpiType, out uint dpiX, out uint dpiY)
    {
        var pnt = new System.Drawing.Point(screen.Bounds.Left + 1, screen.Bounds.Top + 1);
        var mon = MonitorFromPoint(pnt, 2/*MONITOR_DEFAULTTONEAREST*/);
        GetDpiForMonitor(mon, dpiType, out dpiX, out dpiY);
    }

    //https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dd145062(v=vs.85).aspx
    [DllImport("User32.dll")]
    private static extern IntPtr MonitorFromPoint([In]System.Drawing.Point pt, [In]uint dwFlags);

    //https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dn280510(v=vs.85).aspx
    [DllImport("Shcore.dll")]
    private static extern IntPtr GetDpiForMonitor([In]IntPtr hmonitor, [In]DpiType dpiType, [Out]out uint dpiX, [Out]out uint dpiY);
}

//https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dn280511(v=vs.85).aspx
public enum DpiType
{
    Effective = 0,
    Angular = 1,
    Raw = 2,
}

There are three types of scaling, you can find a description in the MSDN.

I tested it quickly with a new WPF application:

private void Window_Loaded(object sender, System.Windows.RoutedEventArgs e)
{
    var sb = new StringBuilder();
    sb.Append("Angular\n");
    sb.Append(string.Join("\n", Display(DpiType.Angular)));
    sb.Append("\nEffective\n");
    sb.Append(string.Join("\n", Display(DpiType.Effective)));
    sb.Append("\nRaw\n");
    sb.Append(string.Join("\n", Display(DpiType.Raw)));

    this.Content = new TextBox() { Text = sb.ToString() };
}

private IEnumerable<string> Display(DpiType type)
{
    foreach (var screen in System.Windows.Forms.Screen.AllScreens)
    {
        uint x, y;
        screen.GetDpi(type, out x, out y);
        yield return screen.DeviceName + " - dpiX=" + x + ", dpiY=" + y;
    }
}

I hope it helps!