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Make Eclipse Editor Work with Retina Displays

I recently had to buy a new computer - a MacBook - because I spilled a full cup of coffee all over the keyboard of my 17" MacBook. I was a little upset. Apple stopped making 17" laptops so to make up the for the lack of screen real estate, I decided to go all out with a shiny new retina display. I admit, I'm more impressed than I thought I would be but the technology comes at a cost. Not all applications look nice with the display. With retina, applications need to display different icons and fonts that are made specifically for a much higher pixel density. Any web developer already deals with this when targeting iPhones or iPads, but since very few non-mobile devices have such displays, not all desktop applications have the necessary files yet.


Eclipse is such a popular IDE that I was devastated to see it doesn't support retina yet. I use the IDE all day long so I scoured the Internet tubes for a solution and found one that is good enough. It only updates the fonts for the editor part and not any of the graphics - obviously - but that's good enough for now. Here's what you need to do...


  1. Right click and "Show package contents" on the Eclipse.app. (STS.app, if using Spring Source Toolkit)

  2. Edit Contents/Info.plist. Just above the closing </dict> </plist>, add <key>NSHighResolutionCapable</key> <true/>

  3. Make a copy of the app (Eclipse copy.app)

  4. Open the copy

  5. Close the copy

  6. Rename the original (Eclipse-NON-RETINA.app)

  7. Rename the copy (Eclipse.app)

  8. Open

  9. Enjoy

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