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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.
PGmath
  • 1,750

6 Answers6

24

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"

enter image description here

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.

Community
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DrZoo
  • 11,391
3

I 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.

  1. Navigate to chrome://flags in your address bar
  2. Search Touch UI Layout
  3. Set to disabled
  4. Reload Chrome as prompted

Your UI sizing will now hopefully make more sense.

domjancik
  • 61
2

Modifying the .desktop files (ubuntu) as in related posts' answers, didn't work for me.

So, this worked:

Modifying the last line from /usr/bin/google-chrome-stable to:

exec -a "$0" "$HERE/chrome" --high-dpi-support=1 --force-device-scale-factor=1 "$@"
Ferroao
  • 220
1

I'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.

Page Zoom Setting

Phillip H. Blanton
  • 119
0

I recently had this issue with Opera Browser. I found a solution online which I tried and it worked somewhat.

Using the shortcut I made for Opera, I right mouse clicked on Properties and in the Shortcut tab, I copy and pasted the code below into the Target Box.

-alt-high-dpi-setting=96 /high-dpi-support=1 /force-device-scale-factor=1

When I restarted Opera, the text, address bar and bookmark favicons were extremely small, blurry and unviewable. An idea popped into my head and I wondered what if I adjusted the (factor=1) portion, gradually increasing the number and using a decimal point to the one-hundredth place.

This is what worked for Opera: -alt-high-dpi-setting=96 /high-dpi-support=1 /force-device-scale-factor=2.72

I also tried my idea with Brave Browser and this is what worked: -alt-high-dpi-setting=96 /high-dpi-support=1 /force-device-scale-factor=2.81

Now my bookmarks, text and address bar for Brave and Opera are perfectly sized and viewable to my liking!

Finally, after making the adjustments, you may find your favorite websites are scaled somewhat smaller even though your default browser scale size is at 100%. I simply went into my Brave and Opera Browser's settings and set the default scale size to 110%. Problem solved.

Del_52
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0

If you are using Linux + Wayland (instead X11) it worked for me:

Open the browser and in the search bar enter:

chrome://flags/

Search for Preferred Ozone platform and choose "Wayland".

enter image description here

Felipe
  • 2,338