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Overview

FreeRDP supports several strategies for handling high-DPI displays and window resizing. The right approach depends on whether you want the remote session to adapt its resolution at runtime or whether you want the client to scale a fixed-resolution session to fit the window.

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Build requirements

Graphics scaling (required for /smart-sizing and high-DPI bitmap scaling) requires one of:
LibraryCMake flagNotes
libswscale (FFmpeg)-DWITH_SWSCALE=ONPart of the FFmpeg libraries
Cairo-DWITH_CAIRO=ONWidely available on Linux/macOS
At least one scaling backend must be present for /smart-sizing to function. Dynamic resolution (/dynamic-resolution) does not require a scaling library because the remote session changes its own resolution rather than scaling bitmaps on the client.
Example build with swscale: 
cmake -GNinja \
  -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release \
  -DWITH_SWSCALE=ON \
  -B build -S .
cmake --build build --target install

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Dynamic resolution

With /dynamic-resolution, FreeRDP sends a display update to the server whenever the client window is resized. The server re-renders at the new resolution — no client-side bitmap scaling takes place. 
xfreerdp /dynamic-resolution /v:rdp.example.com
/dynamic-resolution and /smart-sizing are mutually exclusive. Specifying both is an error.
Under the hood, enabling /dynamic-resolution sets both FreeRDP_SupportDisplayControl and FreeRDP_DynamicResolutionUpdate. The server must support the Display Control virtual channel (available in Windows 8 / Server 2012 and newer).

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Smart-sizing

With /smart-sizing, the remote session keeps its initial resolution and FreeRDP scales the received bitmaps to fit the client window. This works with any server version. 
# Scale to fit whatever window size is used
xfreerdp /smart-sizing /v:rdp.example.com

# Scale to a specific target size (width x height)
xfreerdp /smart-sizing:1920x1080 /v:rdp.example.com
When a target size is supplied, FreeRDP scales to that fixed size regardless of the window dimensions.

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Multi-monitor support

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Span all monitors

xfreerdp /multimon /v:rdp.example.com
The /multimon flag sends the combined geometry of all connected monitors to the server. Use /multimon:force to send multimon information even if the server has not explicitly advertised support.

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Select specific monitors

# Use monitors 0 and 2 (zero-indexed)
xfreerdp /monitors:0,2 /v:rdp.example.com
Up to 16 monitor IDs can be specified as a comma-separated list.

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Window size and DPI

For a fixed session resolution without multimon: 
# Set an explicit width and height
xfreerdp /w:2560 /h:1440 /v:rdp.example.com

# Set size as a percentage of the display
xfreerdp /size:50%h /v:rdp.example.com

# Full-screen mode
xfreerdp /f /v:rdp.example.com
Use dynamic resolution so the session always matches the window exactly:
xfreerdp /dynamic-resolution /f /v:rdp.example.com