For some reason when I opened chrome this morning I noticed that the entire UI has been scaled up slightly. Everything (buttons, text, webpages, etc.) is about ~10% larger than it used to be. This is really annoying since now less fits on my screen (particularly now my bookmarks bar doesn't fit as many bookmarks).
I can't find any kind of UI DPI scaling option in the settings. How can I change it back to what it used to be?
Notes:
- This isn't a problem in the Windows DPI scaling settings since this didn't happen with any other programs.
- I know how to zoom in and out of webpages, but that's definitely not the problem as the entire UI is scaled up, not just the webpage.
3 Answers
With the Chrome 54 update they made it so Chrome can detect the DPI setting on your computer so that the web browser will be scaled accordingly.
Google Chrome didn’t used to pay attention to your Windows DPI setting. Now it does, and that’s the root cause of the large interface issue.
If you have the DPI scaling set to 125% or greater on your Windows computer, then the Chrome browser will scale differently depending on that setting.
Option #1
Have Windows specifically tell the Chrome program not to do DPI scaling by:
Right-click the Chrome icon > Properties > Compatibility > and CHECK "Disable display scaling on high DPI settings"
Option #2 (Seems to be most successful)
The obvious fix is to just set your computer’s DPI scaling back to 100%. That will make Chrome appear how it used to but everything else will be smaller, so it’s not a very good fix.
Just type “dpi” into your Windows search bar and open the top result, “Make text and other items appear larger and smaller” (at least that’s how it is on Windows 7).
Option #3
Right-click on the Google Chrome shortcut or start menu icon and select >properties > shortcut tab
Enter the following code at the end of the text in the Target field:
/high-dpi-support=1 /force-device-scale-factor=1
Make sure there’s a blank space between the .exe” part and the first forward slash.
Hit Apply and then restart Chrome.
If the scaling isn’t back to normal, make sure to launch Chrome from the location specified above. If Chrome is on your taskbar, don't forget to unpin Chrome and repin it. This isn't a permanent fix anyway because other links to Chrome (like hyperlinks in PDFs) can trigger the larger UI as well.
7I'm using Google Chrome Version 62.0.3202.94 (Official Build) (64-bit) on Ubuntu and I see under "Settings | Appearance" that there is a "Page Zoom" setting that you can use to customize the scaling in Chrome. I'm sure it's there in the Windows and Mac versions too.
I have mine set to 125% because I have a laptop with a 4k display and the normal zoom factor is too small in Chrome, though the rest of the OS (Ubuntu 17.10) is fine.
1I had similar problems and while the scaling override fixed it somewhat, something still looked off. I was also seeing a seemingly unrelated issue, a greyed out maximize button, which led me to another solution.
Chrome Maximize button greyed out and not working
This may be the case for you or not, but it seems that Chrome now also detects whether your device is touch-enabled and if so, displays certain top bar elements larger.
If you find this setting doing more harm than good, then go ahead and disable Touch UI via the Touch UI Layout flag.
- Navigate to
chrome://flagsin your address bar - Search
Touch UI Layout - Set to disabled
- Reload Chrome as prompted
Your UI sizing will now hopefully make more sense.
