Apex Legends – How To Play Stretched 4:3 without Black Bars

As you guys may already know, Apex Legends patches are the only method to play stretched way back in 2020. Now the question arises if you can even play the game at 4:3 without black bars? Well, the answer is “Yes”. I will show you how to do that in this guide.

Apex Legends Black Bar Fix

How To Play Apex Legends in 4:3 Streched without Black Bars

Before starting the actual settings to make the game run in Stretched, you need to make some changes in the NVIDIA Control Panel. Let’s take a look at that first:

NVIDIA Control Panel Setup

From the main home screen, Right-Click and open NVIDIA Control Panel. Now Go over to the “Change Resolution” option and do the following:

  • Click on Customize option from the right side tab.
  • Now create a custom resolution for yourself.
  • If you want to play on 1440 x 1080, change the current resolution to these values.
  • In the refresh rate slot, make sure to put your monitors’ native refresh rate.
  • Now simply click on the test if you want to test that.
  • Once you are happy with the settings click save and you are done with NVIDIA Control panel settings.

Create Custom Resolution Apex Legends

Tweaking Video Files (Saved Games)

Go to your windows search bar and type “Saved Games”. Open the folder that pops up with this name.

  • Go to “Respawn”
  • Select Apex
  • Go over to “Local”
  • Finally, select “Videoconfig”

videoconfig - apex legends

Look for a parameter called “setting.defaultres” and “setting.defaultresheight”. Change these values to 1440 x 1080 from the current one, respectively. NOTE: Make sure to take a backup of this file before editing anything here. In case of any issues, simply replace this file with the original one.

Before making any changes to this, go to properties for this file, and make sure to uncheck “Read Only”. Save the file, go back to this option and check “Read Only” again. If done correctly, that would be all you need to do here.

Adding Apex Legends Launch Options To Steam/Origin

Now you would want to open up origin/Steam (Mine is on steam). Right-Click on Apex Legends and select properties. In the empty field of launch commands: copy-paste the following:

  • +mat_letterbox_aspect_goal 0 +mat_letterbox_aspect_threshold 0 +building_cubemaps "1"

Properties - Apex Legends

After you do this, go to NVIDIA Control Panel again and do the following:

  • Select Adjust Desktop Size and Position.
  • Go to Scaling and Put it on “Fullscreen”.
  • Put the “Performance Scaling” to “GPU”.
  • Check the box “Override the scaling mode set by games and programs”.
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The Final Step

This is the most important step to this method so follow this one carefully.

  • First, launch Apex Legends and let it startup.
  • Press ALT+Tab to bring your desktop in front. if you see that the toolbar color is more vibrant, then you are certain that the game is “Tabbed Out”.
  • Now simply open the NVIDIA Control Panel > Select your Custom Resolution that you made > Hit Apply.
  • Finally, press ALT+Enter while inside the game and let the game adjust the resolution.

If you have done it the way I explained, Apex Legends should now appear to be fully stretched out with any vertical or horizontal black bars.

Take Note: You have to do this every time you open the game (Only the final step!)


If you face any issues during the entire process of this, revert back to the original and start again if you feel like doing so. Since this is an advanced method, I highly recommend that you do this at your own risk, and after taking all the backups of your settings.

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