How to Make Games Full Screen on Pc (2026 Guide)

A game that launches in a tiny window in the corner of a 27-inch monitor is one of PC gaming’s oldest annoyances, and it happens for at least six different reasons. Sometimes it is a single keyboard shortcut away from fixed; other times you need launch options, a config file edit or a change in your graphics driver. This guide walks through every fix in order, from the ten-second one to the last resort.

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Direct answer: press Alt and Enter together, which toggles fullscreen in the large majority of PC games. If that does nothing, open the game’s Video or Display settings and switch Display Mode from Windowed to Fullscreen or Borderless, then match the resolution to your monitor’s native resolution. For stubborn titles, add a launch option such as -fullscreen, or edit the game’s configuration file directly.

Games Where Learning to Make Games Full Screen on PC Actually Pays Off

These are the titles that most often need manual display tweaking, plus a few modern examples of display settings done right.

The fastest ways to make games full screen on PC

Start with Alt and Enter. This shortcut is handled at the DirectX level in a huge number of games and flips instantly between windowed and fullscreen with no menu diving. For browser-based games, itch.io embeds and emulator front ends running in a browser, press F11 instead, which puts the browser itself into fullscreen. If neither works, open the game’s own settings — usually under Options, then Video, Graphics or Display — and find the Display Mode, Window Mode or Screen Mode dropdown. Set it to Fullscreen, then separately set Resolution to your monitor’s native value, because a fullscreen game running at a lower resolution than your panel can still look letterboxed or blurry. Apply, and if the game asks to restart, let it. This two-step combination resolves the overwhelming majority of cases before you need any of the more technical fixes below.

Fullscreen, borderless or windowed: which one you actually want

Exclusive fullscreen hands the display over to the game, which historically gave the lowest input latency and the most reliable variable refresh rate behaviour, but it makes alt-tabbing slow and can cause mode-switch flickering on multi-monitor setups. Borderless windowed draws the game as a window with no frame at your full screen size, so alt-tabbing is instant and overlays behave properly, at the cost of a frame of latency in some engines. Plain windowed is only useful for multitasking or testing. On Windows 11 the gap has narrowed considerably because of optimisations for windowed games, so borderless is the sensible default for most people, and exclusive fullscreen is worth choosing only for competitive shooters where every millisecond of latency matters. If you are chasing that kind of responsiveness, a best gaming monitors guide will tell you more than any display-mode tweak, and a gaming mouse buying guide covers the other half of the equation.

Launch options and config files for stubborn games

Some games ignore their own menu or remember a bad window state. On Steam, right-click the game, choose Properties, and enter a launch option in the box. Common ones are -fullscreen or -full for Source and many older engines, -screen-fullscreen 1 for Unity titles, and -w 1920 -h 1080 to force a resolution. Unity games also accept -screen-width and -screen-height. On the Epic Games Store, additional command line arguments live under the game’s settings gear. If launch options fail, edit the config file. Look in Documents, My Games, or the AppData Roaming and LocalLow folders for a file named something like settings.ini, prefs, config.cfg or GraphicsSettings.ini, then change a value such as FullScreen=0 to FullScreen=1 and Windowed=1 to Windowed=0. Back the file up first, and make sure the game is fully closed before saving, or it will overwrite your edit on exit.

GPU scaling: removing black bars and stretching to fill

If a game goes fullscreen but leaves black bars on the sides, the game is running at a different aspect ratio than your monitor and something needs to stretch it. On Nvidia hardware, open the Nvidia Control Panel, go to Adjust desktop size and position, set Scaling mode to Full-screen, set Perform scaling on to GPU, and tick the option to override the scaling mode set by games and programs. On AMD, open Adrenalin Software, go to Display, enable GPU Scaling, and set Scaling Mode to Full Panel. On Intel integrated graphics, use the Intel Graphics Command Center under Display and General, then choose Stretch or Centre under Scale. Also check your monitor’s own on-screen menu, since many panels have an aspect ratio or image expansion setting that overrides the GPU. Stretching a 4:3 game to 16:9 will distort it, so decide whether you would rather have bars or squashed geometry. Anyone spending this long in driver menus should also read a best budget graphics cards comparison, because scaling quality varies by generation.

Windows settings that break fullscreen

Three Windows features regularly interfere. First, display scaling: if your desktop is set to 125 or 150 percent, older games can render at the wrong size. Right-click the game’s executable, open Properties, then Compatibility, click Change high DPI settings, and enable the override with scaling performed by Application or System. Second, fullscreen optimisations: in the same Compatibility tab, ticking Disable fullscreen optimizations forces true exclusive fullscreen for games that misbehave with the modern compositor. Third, the resolution and refresh rate set in Settings, System, Display — a game cannot fill a screen at a resolution your display is not configured to accept. On Windows 11 also look at Settings, System, Display, Graphics, then Default graphics settings, where the optimisations for windowed games and variable refresh rate toggles live. Fast storage helps every one of these restarts feel less painful, which is why a best SSDs for gaming guide is a worthwhile detour.

Multi-monitor problems and games that keep minimising

On a dual-monitor setup, a game that opens on the wrong display is usually looking for the Windows primary display. Set the correct monitor as primary in display settings, or use Windows and Shift and an arrow key to move a windowed instance across before switching to fullscreen. Games that minimise the moment you move the mouse are almost always in exclusive fullscreen while something else steals focus — a second-monitor click, a Discord popup, an overlay or a background updater. Switching to borderless windowed cures it instantly. If a fullscreen game shows the taskbar on top, restart Explorer from Task Manager, which resets the always-on-top state. Games that flicker between modes on start-up are typically fighting with variable refresh rate; disabling G-Sync or FreeSync for that specific application in the driver control panel resolves it. A tidy desk setup makes juggling two displays much easier, so a gaming chair buying guide is more relevant to comfortable multi-monitor play than it first appears.

Old games, retro resolutions and third-party tools

Pre-2005 games often only support 640×480, 800×600 or 1024×768 in 4:3, and no amount of in-game tweaking will make them natively fill a modern widescreen panel. For those, GPU scaling plus your monitor’s aspect ratio setting is the answer, and many classics have community widescreen patches that raise the supported resolution list. When a game genuinely offers no fullscreen option at all, third-party tools fill the gap: Borderless Gaming strips the window frame and stretches a window to fill the screen, and Simple Runtime Window Editor can force size and position on almost anything. Lossless Scaling, sold on Steam, upscales a windowed game to fullscreen with several algorithms and is popular for emulators and older titles. Emulator front ends usually have their own integer scaling and aspect options, which produce cleaner results than stretching. If you also play with a controller in a living room setup, a best controllers for PC roundup pairs naturally with big-screen fullscreen play.

Frequently Asked Questions About How to Make Games Full Screen on PC

Why does Alt and Enter not make my game full screen?

The shortcut relies on the game or its graphics API handling the message, and many modern engines, launchers and Unity titles ignore it entirely. In those cases you need the in-game display mode setting, a launch option such as -fullscreen, or a direct edit to the game’s configuration file to force the mode.

Is borderless or exclusive fullscreen better for performance?

Exclusive fullscreen still edges out borderless for input latency and variable refresh rate consistency, particularly in competitive shooters. For everything else the difference is now small enough that borderless windowed is the better choice, because alt-tabbing is instant, overlays work correctly and multi-monitor setups stop misbehaving.

How do I remove black bars when a game is full screen?

Black bars mean the game’s aspect ratio does not match your panel. Enable GPU scaling in your Nvidia, AMD or Intel control panel and set the scaling mode to full screen or full panel, then check your monitor’s own image expansion setting. Be aware this stretches and distorts genuinely 4:3 games.

Can I force full screen on a game with no display settings at all?

Yes, using external tools. Borderless Gaming and Simple Runtime Window Editor can strip a window’s border and resize it to fill your screen, while Lossless Scaling upscales the output. These work on almost any windowed application, including emulators and very old games that only support fixed low resolutions.