Hasta La Gadget!

It’s not news that the Chrome support for high DPI (hiDPI) has been a work in progress for some time, and within the past year or so, the proliferation of high DPI displays on laptops has made the need for good high dpi support even more important. I have messed with a few beta features before, and some of them ended up making Chrome completely unusable.

I mostly tolerated the lack of high DPI on 13.3” laptop screens, but now that I work with a 32” 4K desktop display, I can no longer use Chrome without true high DPI support. Unfortunately, the old tricks won’t work anymore, but fret not there is a solution that does.

Context

For this tutorial, I have used:

• A Dell 32” 4K display
• A GeForce GTX 760 card (Display Port to Mini-DisplayPort cable)
• Windows 8.0, then Windows 8.1
• Chrome Version 34.0.1847.116 m

Past hacks

In the past, you could go to the Chrome settings and enable hiDPI from there. Here were the steps, which now no longer work:

1. In Chrome, go to “chrome://flags”
2. Search “HiDPI Support” in the settings
3. Make it go from “Default” to “Enabled”
4. Restart Chrome

First of all, it may have worked at some point, but a lot of people got burned out when Chrome turned into a garbled mess which was unreadable. The solution was to go back and fix this by following the same steps, but “blind”. I did it, it wasn’t fun, and re-installing Chrome didn’t solve it since the settings were apparently left in Windows after the uninstall. This option was removed around March 13 2014.

You may also find a second proposition which consists in adding command-line arguments to the Chrome app shortcut to enable HiDPI. They look like this:

–high-dpi-support=1
–force-device-scale-factor=2

There are TWO hyphens, and unfortunately, neither combinations work with the latest builds.

New Solution

The Chrome product support page is not really of much help, but fortunately a friend of mine pointed out that this was an active issue that was being tracked in by the Chromium development community.

I headed there and found updated information including a fix that actually works on my system and that I expect to work on most systems.

The most recent version of Chrome toggles the hiDPI support based on a Windows Registry value. This is why the old tricks don’t work any more.

I know that’s it is a pain to edit the registry files, but fortunately, some handy little files are already available on the Chromium site. Fair warning: this is not something that Google officially supports, and you run registry commands from an unknown source at your own peril.

1. Follow these links to download the registry files to Enable hiDPI and to Disable hiDPI support.
2. Once downloaded just double-click on one of the scripts
3. You will get a Windows security warning saying that the scripts could not be verified
4. Click “Run”
5. The Windows User Account Control will ask you to confirm. Click “yes”
6. The Registry Editor will issue a warning saying “Adding information can uunintentionally change or delete values and cause components to stop working correctly. If you do not trust the source of this information in [file path], do not add it to the registry. Are you sure you want to continue?” Click Yes
7. The registry editor should confirm that the “keys and values contained in [file path] have been successfully added to the registry”
8. Close and restart chrome
9. HiDPI should be enabled!

Thanks for Eugene Girard for uploading them to the Chrome Google Groups, and to Alex Sorokoletov for fixing an encoding issues on the original scripts.

The good thing with these, is that even if Chrome became or garbled, you could disable hiDPI support without going in blind and angry.

Additional Note

By default, Chrome is launched by Windows with some old display scaling on hi DPI displays. This is what makes the fonts blurry to start with. Even if you don’t enable Chrome’s built-in hiDPI settings, running Chrome with “Disable display scaling on high DPI settings” will help make the HTML text not blurry — although they may appear very small. This doesn’t solve the hiDPI issue, but it does help somewhat if you can tolerate using a 100% scale (no scaling).

1. Find the Chrome shortcut on your computer, or create one
2. Open its properties
3. Go to the Compatibility Tab
4. Check “Disable display scaling on high DPI settings”
5. Click on OK or Apply.
6. Close and restart Chrome

Pending problems in hiDPI mode

I’m glad to report that the steps above helped me setup Chrome with my hiDPI display. However, I have noticed that the Chrome window now sometime refuses to be moved and/or resized for some period of time.

If I wait long enough, the freeze magically go away, but this is something that I had never experienced before switching to high DPI mode. In the meanwhile, all HTML functions still work properly and you can read/browse the content.

Keep in mind that hiDPI is still very much under development, so things may change and be unstable until this feature is officially rolled out. If that is of interest, you can follow the code issue tracking #149881.

Finally, even after getting this to work, I noticed that hiDPI support was still better on both IE and Firefox, so if all else fails, you can still fallback on these.

Conclusion

Follow these steps at your own risk. It worked fine for me, but I haven’t had the opportunity to test them on other systems. I hope that it helps you enjoy your new hiDPI display.

If it doesn’t work, or if you have additional questions, drop a comment, and I will help if I can. If not, maybe someone else in the community can pitch in. If a few can pitch in a little, everyone’s computing experience will improve.

Chrome High DPI: How To Enable It In Windows 8, 8.1 (v34+)

, original content from Ubergizmo, Filed in Computers, 4k, chrome, Google, Windows,

If you work online or with a lot of gadgets, chances are you want a backpack that can hold everything with an organized system for where things need to go. There are many backpacks out there that are only going for aesthetics, and look like they could only hold a laptop and a fun-size bag of M&Ms. If you are constantly on the move and need all of your gear to come with you, then you want something that looks professional and won’t make you worry about not having enough space for everything.

The Tylt Energy Backpack + Battery was made with the gadget-savvy in mind. You can charge three gadgets simultaneously thanks to the internal 10,500mAh lithium ion battery with in various configurations through the 7 pockets. That battery is capable of recharging your tablet once, and your phone four times over. You can even pass a cable outside of the backpack so you can charge your phone while it’s in your hand.

If you can remember to keep the backpack recharged whenever you’re near a wall outlet, car charger, or computer, then this could regularly be a lifesaver. The material this pack is made from is a high-quality ballistic nylon, and most of the places to store your laptop, sunglasses, and phone are lined with a soft material that will keep them scratch-free. In the back panel, there is a trolley slot, meaning you can slide this over your rolling luggage when going through an airport. If all this isn’t enough, there’s a pass-through for headphones near the pocket meant for your phone, as well as a pocket for headphones on the backpack strap for easy access. This certainly seems worth the $200 ($140 if you have Amazon Prime) price tag.

Available for purchase on Amazon
[ The Tylt Energy Backpack + Battery was made for geeks on the go copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Ever since Dolly the sheep was cloned eighteen years ago, scientists have been trying and failing to use that same technique to create cloned human embryos from adult cells. Now, they’ve finally succeeded, in what could a major step toward personalized organ transplants and other therapies that rely on a pool of stem cells.

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After many “Grasshopper” tests, SpaceX’s first real try at launching a reusable rocket will attempt flight again in just a few minutes — watch the live stream here or embedded after the break. Scrubbed due to a helium leak a couple of days ago, the…

QR codes are showing up everywhere. I have to admit it took me a while to understand the appeal. I’m finally starting to see how useful these odd little pattern filled squares are. A simple scanning app, and you can be connected to all sorts of information. Is it any surprise that they are making their way onto wearable items, and into social media?

Well, check out Skanz… a cool new product, that that lets you wear your entire social profile, by means of a trendy little QR-coded bracelet. Simply choose a thin, or a wide band in the color of your choice, register it with skanz.com, and create your own personal, mobile “Skanzsite”. Skanzsites allow anyone that scans your unique QR code with their smartphone to connect all of your social media accounts, like Facebook,  or Instagram,  any contact info you would like to share, like phone numbers, or addresses, and your favorite photos, music and more.

The Skanz bracelets also come in a Jr. version that allows your kids to build a fun homepage that includes all the fun things they would like to share, like TV shows, music videos, favorite things, all without revealing any personal info, that could be dangerous. There is never any charge to customize or maintain your Skanzsite and both regular and Jr. Skanzsites have the ability to be password protected.

If you’d like to get in on the newest way to indulge in your social media obsession, or just want another way to answer the question “can I have your number?” then a Skanz bracelet is just what you’re looking for. Get yours at amazon.com for under 12 bucks.
[ Skanz – Where Social Media and Fashion Collide copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]