Huawei P30/Pro: How to Change Display Density (DPI)

BY Rajesh Pandey

Published 12 May 2019

Huawei P30 Pro Display

Despite their flagship status, the Huawei P30 and P30 Pro come with an FHD+ resolution display. While the panels are good, they are nowhere near as good as the OLED panels used by Samsung on its Galaxy S10 series. While there’s not much one can do about this, as a Huawei P30/Pro owner, you can at least increase/decrease the display density to display more (or less) content.

By changing the display density/DPI, Huawei P30 and P30 Pro owners can end up displaying more content on the display. Or they can use a lower DPI to make everything on the display larger. Changing the display density is different from changing the font size as the UI elements also scale accordingly while tweaking the DPI.

The problem is that while Huawei offers an option to change the display density/DPI in EMUI 9.1, the smallest DPI option might not be enough for many. Thankfully, like with everything else in EMUI, there’s a way to work around this problem.

How to Change Display Density in Huawei P30/Pro

First, go ahead and change the display density the regular way by following the steps below.

Step 1: Go to Settings -> Display -> Text and display size.

Step 2: Drag the display size slider to the very left to increase the content density on the display.

Huawei P30 Display Density

If you are fine with the new DPI, all’s well. However, if you want to increase the information density even further on the display, do the following.

Step 3: Go to Settings -> System -> About Phone. Tap on Build Number 7 times to enable the hidden Developer Options.

Step 4: Go back to Settings -> System -> Developer Options.

Step 5: Scroll down to the Smallest width option under Drawing.

Huawei P30 DPI

Enter a value from anywhere between 400-440. A higher value will increase the display density while a lower density will make the UI elements bigger and show less information on the screen.

My recommendation is to use a display density of anywhere between 420-430. As soon as you press Ok, the whole UI will be updated.


Now, as with everything with EMUI on the Huawei P30/Pro, there’s a catch here as well. Changing the display density will lead to some UI glitches which you will not encounter on other devices. What’s worse is that despite the change in display density, the notification shade and the Recent Apps view will retain the default display density. This means they will look a bit out of place and comically large when compared to other UI elements.

Despite these drawbacks though, changing the display density on the Huawei P30/Pro makes a lot of sense especially if you are a power user.