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How to Enable Chrome High DPI Mode in Windows 8

How to Enable Chrome High DPI Mode in Windows 8

Many default Windows 8 apps automatically support a high DPI mode when using a high resolution 4K display, but some apps don’t, at least without some manual tweaking. These apps are instead upscaled and take on a blurry and ugly appearance. One such app is Google Chrome, the browser of choice for many Windows users. Thankfully, you can manually enable Chrome high DPI mode with a quick registry setting.
Launch the Windows Registry Editor by heading to the Start Screen and searching for regedit. Alternatively, in Windows 8.1, you can right-click on the Desktop Start Button, choose Run, and then type regedit to find the Registry Editor.
Navigate to the following registry location:

HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareGoogleChrome

You may already have a key called Profile but, if you don’t, you can create it. Right click on “Chrome” and select New > Key and name the new key Profile.
Click on the new Profile key to select it, and then right-click in the right pane of the Registry Editor. Select New > DWORD (32-bit) Value and name it the following:

high-dpi-support

Double-click the new DWORD and enter 1 in the Value Data box. Press OK to save the change.
Finally, close the Registry Editor and quit Chrome. When you relaunch Chrome, you’ll immediately notice that the browser’s interface, buttons, and menus are all noticeably sharper, taking advantage of High DPI scaling to look great on 4K displays.

Chrome High DPI Comparison

Upscaled resolution (top) compared to High DPI mode (bottom)


If you ever want to revert to the default visual settings, such as when you connect a standard resolution display to your PC, head back to the registry location above and give the DWORD a value of 0.

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10 thoughts on “How to Enable Chrome High DPI Mode in Windows 8”

TechByMak says:
You can find 4 other methods to Disable Windows 8 mode in Google Chrome
Philip says:
What if I have chrome x64bit do i create New > DWORD (64-bit) Value?
Peter876 says:
This didn’t work for me. When I restart chrome, it automatically changes the registry value back to a 2.
John says:
It does the same for me. Have you managed to solve this?
Peter876 says:
Nope. So far I simply got used to using it this way.
Pitchayatak Ponrod says:
I tried that. Some text kerning is horrible. You can see in the picture. The word “Tekrevue”. “T” and “e” are too far apart. The same with “u” and “e”
pichetou says:
Great tip, so far I had only disabled the DPI scaling and set 200% zoom as default, which made the toolbar look tiny. Thanks, this fixed it.
JamesDig says:
I did it, and it worked, but had a really weird side effect; I could no longer drag Chrome windows around the screen! I reset the value to 0 and the windows could move again. Dang! For a moment I thought you’d solved my biggest gripe with Win 8. Any idea if there’s a fix for the side-effect?
Glorywebs says:
Window 8 is innovative Technology Recent ……..
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George LI says:
No working for me :(
zan5hin says:
There is also a .reg file: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/chromium-dev/U_K1NHuMLic
I cannot get it working however. It worked once for me, but then I reinstalled windows and it isn’t working again.
TekRevue says:
All the reg file does is perform the registry changes for you. But reg files from nefarious sources can also cause significant harm (not saying the one you linked to does that, just in general), so I like to show the manual way to do things, especially when it’s a quick edit.
zan5hin says:
Fair point. Yes, it was better to know where the magic happens.
BTW, I got high dpi working, it was a conflict with Windows automatically defaulting to “Larger” under display. I ticked “Let me choose scaling level for all my displays” and set it to Medium and it looks much better.

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Jim Tanous

May 16, 2014

676 Articles Published

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