Remote Desktop Connection Smart Sizing

If you use Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) a lot then you might be interested in an option that’s not available via the GUI. ‘Smart Sizing’ allows you to scale the screen to the size of the RDC window rather than the default option where the remote desktop gets cropped.

If you open a new RDC instance and expand the ‘Options >>>’ button you see the following screen :

Remote Desktop Connection dialog box

At the bottom of the dialog is the option to ‘Save’ the current settings. Fill out as much as you normally would to connect to a remote box and then Save the file onto your local machine somewhere.

Edit that file with the text editor of your choice and add the following line to the bottom of the .rdp file you saved:

smart sizing:i:1

This will force RDC to scale the window when you shrink it and will stretch back to full screen when you click ‘Maximise’.

I create a collection of these .rdp files for each of the servers I need to communicate with and have a directory of them as a custom toolbar on my task bar.

Just remember to start your RDC session from your saved .rdp file to take advantage of the scaling trick