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Kalamalka Kid
Asked: 2016-03-07 17:53:06 +0800 CST

chrome resolution changes when monitor is turned off

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Having an issue with Google Chrome resolution/dpi changing when I turn my monitor off. I'm pretty sure that this is all related to the scaling factor from Universal Access Panel. in which I have large text turned on. This setting makes Chrome have bigger tabs, but is not recognized when monitor is turned off. I have to shut down Chrome, and restart it it to recognize the Universal Access setting.

To see what is going on with my display settings while my monitor is turned off I used `xrandr'.

The output of xrandr while monitor is ON is:

Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 1920 x 1080, maximum 32767 x 32767
DP1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI1 connected primary 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 890mm x 500mm
   1920x1080      60.0*+   59.9     30.0     24.0     30.0     24.0  
   1920x1080i     60.1     60.0  
   1280x720       60.0     59.9  
   720x480        60.0     59.9  
   640x480        60.0     59.9

The output of xrandr while monitor is OFF is:

Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 1920 x 1080, maximum 32767 x 32767
DP1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
HDMI1 connected primary 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 708mm x 398mm
   1280x720       60.0 +   50.0     30.0     59.9     30.0     24.0     24.0  
   4096x2160      24.0     24.0  
   3840x2160      30.0     25.0     24.0     30.0     24.0  
   1920x1080      60.0*    50.0     59.9     30.0     25.0     24.0     30.0     24.0  
   1920x1080i     60.1     50.0     60.0  
   720x576        50.0  
   720x480        60.0     59.9  
   640x480        60.0     59.9

In any case I would like to figure out how to keep chrome's dpi/resolution stable so that I don't have to restart it each time my monitor is turned off/on. Here are two screenshots of before and after.

before after

Please note that the second photo is what Chrome would look like if I did NOT have Universal Access with large text turned ON.

Something interesting that I noticed is that in this larger mode (second photo), the buttons and navigation don't actually correlate to the items on the screen. If I click any of the bookmark bar icons at the top with the mouse, the browser would not navigate to the right one. For example, if I clicked on the UTUBE short cut in the bookmarks bar it would take me to the $$$ link. It seems to be behaving as though the object & frame mappings are still 'calibrated' for when the scale was bigger.

google-chrome

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    I discovered that Chrome has changed to the Aura framework, and no longer uses GTK framework.

    A simple workaround is to launch Chrome with:

    google-chrome --high-dpi-support=1 --force-device-scale-factor=1.5
    • 5

  2. As mentioned here, Chrome has changed to the Aura framework, and no longer uses GTK framework. This causes however some peculiarities.

    As mentioned by Kalamalka Kid, who actually did practically all of the work, it can be worked around by running Chrome with the command:

    google-chrome --high-dpi-support=1 --force-device-scale-factor=<scale_factor>

    e.g.:

    google-chrome --high-dpi-support=1 --force-device-scale-factor=1.5

    How to make Google Chrome start by default with the changed scale factor

    1. Copy the global Google-chrome launcher from /usr/local/share/applications to ~/.local/share/applications:

      cp /usr/share/applications/google-chrome.desktop ~/.local/share/applications

    2. Open the local copy with gedit:

      gedit ~/.local/share/applications/google-chrome.desktop

      Look for the line: Exec=/usr/bin/google-chrome-stable %U, change it into:

      google-chrome --high-dpi-support=1 --force-device-scale-factor=1.5

    Now after you log out/in, Chrome starts by default in your altered scaling.

    • 1