I let my nephew use my PC and now every Web page I visit is too small to read, even my favorites like USA Today. That never used to be the case. How do I fix it so I can read the text on Web pages?
Before we throw any nephews under any busses, it sounds like what he’s done is simply changed the “zoom level” in your copy of Google Chrome, something a lot of more sophisticated users do with keyboard shortcuts, never really thinking about whether to set it back to the default when they’re done.
The good news is that it’s a really easy fix and might just be a feature that you’ll find useful down the road when you visit other Web sites and find that the text is still too small even at “regular” zoom level. That’s easy to fix too!
To start, let’s have a peek at the New York Times home page, with the Google Chrome zoom set to, well, pretty small:
That’s pretty small, as you can see, and frustratingly, there’s all that so-called white space (really, “empty space”) on either side of the content that could be used, right?
The standard way to adjust the zoom is to click on the three horizontal lines on the right side of the address bar.
Do that and a menu pops up:
There’s the zoom level, right in the middle. Apparently I’m currently at 75%. No wonder it’s so small!
You can click on “-” and “+” to adjust it, and you’ll immediately see the change on the window. When I get back to 100%, it’s a lot easier to read:
That’s how you work with zoom level.
Now let’s get to the power user capabilities. Whenever you’re not at 100% zoom, there’s a tiny magnifying lens that shows up in the address bar. You can see it in the first example (but not in the one above, since that is at 100%).
Click on the magnifying lens if you see it and…
There ya go, a sneaky shortcut. How helpful!
Want to permanently lock the text zoom to be bigger? Go back to the menu off the three-horizontal lines button (shown above) and choose “Settings”, then go to “Advanced Settings” (scroll down to the bottom of the screen). Then you can find a default zoom level setting:
That’s how you can reset your page zoom to 100%, 110%, or whatever else makes the Web easier to read.
Now, what can we do to impress your nephew with your technical prowess?! Hmmm….