Plot Viewer does not respect Retina/HiDPI settings

[ianholst]

Steps to reproduce:

1. Open a Jupyter notebook in VS Code
2. Run this code in a cell:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
%config InlineBackend.figure_format = "retina"

plt.figure(figsize=[2,2])
plt.plot()
plt.show()

3. Click the "Expand Image" button on the resulting plot

Expected behaviour

I expect the Plots window to properly show the image in 1:1 size.

Actual behaviour

The image is blurry and twice as big as it should be. Because of that, it often runs off the screen, and when you try to zoom out, it causes problems if you have multiple images open (but that's a separate issue).

Environment data

• VS Code version: 1.113.0
• Jupyter Extension version (available under the Extensions sidebar): 2025.10.2026032701
• Python Extension version (available under the Extensions sidebar): 2026.4.0
• OS: Windows 11
• Python and/or Anaconda version: 3.12.0
• Type of virtual environment used: none
• Jupyter server running: Local