On my laptop I have an HiDPI, "4k", 3840x2160 monitor, so I have set "window scaling" to "2x" under "settings" -> "appearence" -> "settings". Everything works as expected but the desktop. Let's say you have a desktop with no icons yet and have "icons orientation" set to "top left vertical" (the default); now you create some files on the desktop: file "1", "2", "3" and so on, until these files' icons fill the vertical size of your desktop, let's say, with file "8". Now you create file "9". Its icon doesn't show on the desktop, it "gets rendered below its bottom", and the same happens with new file "10", "11" and so on, until you reach file "17": its icon gets rendered on top of screen as first icon of a new column, while icons for files from "9" to "16" stay offscreen and there's no way to reach them. It's like the algorithm that places the icons is considering a double-sized desktop.
As a workaround I created a .desktop file in /etc/xdg/autostart [Desktop Entry] Encoding=UTF-8 Version=1.0 Type=Application Name=Workaround for xfdesktop seeing double when window scaling is set to 2x Exec=sh -c "xfdesktop -Q && sleep 1 && GDK_SCALE=1 GDK_DPI_SCALE=1 xfdesktop &" OnlyShowIn=XFCE; StartupNotify=false Terminal=false Hidden=false This solves the "offscreen icons" issue, but right-clicking on the desktop or desktop icons obviously shows very tiny menus, as they are not scaled 2x, nor are applications which are launched from those menus.
It is the same type of scaling, regardless of how you enable it. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 15285 ***