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I often use Chrome's Cmd++ and Cmd+- (Ctrl++ and Ctrl+- on Windows) to zoom in and out on a web page.

However, the new zoom level affects every tab showing a page from the same domain. Sometimes this is handy, but other times it's a big problem.

Right now, I want to zoom a page containing a video on one tab, while continuing to read text at a normal size in another tab. Is there any method for controlling zoom independently of other tabs?

For now I'm stuck using another browser.

Giacomo1968
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Jason Clark
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    There is an issue about it at: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=390775 – Qtax Mar 06 '15 at 12:17
  • I notice that the page Qtax refers to also refers people back to this page. It looks like the consensus is that this is by design, but there is an extension (or more than one) that can be added, which changes this behavior. – TOOGAM Aug 28 '16 at 11:43
  • I believe Firefox does the same thing. I recommend altering title to reflect "web browsers", and adding Firefox tag. – TOOGAM Aug 28 '16 at 11:44
  • A workaround is to open the single page in a different browser (Firefox, Edge, etc).. – wip Dec 26 '16 at 10:10
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    Ha! and I've just found out the same happens to Firefox (at least in version 53) – dvdgc13 May 26 '17 at 08:40

10 Answers10

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Just discovered that the issue linked by @Qtax in the comments to the original question was marked as "Wontfix" by the Chromium dev team a couple of years ago.

They state that this behavior is by design, and they do not intent to provide per-page zoom. The extensions mentioned in other answers appear to be the only resolution for this issue.

Giacomo1968
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Jason Clark
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    Why don't they just add a setting that allows users to choose whether the zooming only affects one tab or all tabs in a domain? The setting could even default to the current behavior. It would be a completely backwards-compatible change. – Peter Schorn Aug 10 '20 at 18:41
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    Just go straight to https://superuser.com/a/1638387/19079 and install the extension. It works instantly and just changed my life in an instant! – Simon Jun 10 '22 at 20:38
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I have read once that it is one of Chrome's disadvantages. However, there is an extension that may help you, called zoomWheel. You can find it here.

Mark Jeronimus
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Matias
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I was looking for this too and found an extension that's precisly for this. It's called Per Tab Zoom.

It lets you customize these 4 shortcuts:

Ctrl+Mouse wheel

Ctrl+Shift+Mouse wheel

Ctrl++/-

Ctrl+Shift++/-

For each one, you can choose what kind of zoom to perform, either per-tab zoom or per-domain zoom.

You can also disable some of the shortcuts if you don't want to use them.

Tim
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If you open an incognito window the zoom level is different per domain. This is helpful in some situations.

Also you can install Google Chrome Canary which is a more recent (but possibly less stable) version of Chrome that can exist side by side with the regular Chrome. Since it's a whole separate program you can therefore use a different zoom level.

Simon
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  • Solved my immediate issue with incognito mode. NB! Multiple incognito windows with the same domain will still have identical zoom levels. Not a problem in my case but ymmv. – sastorsl Nov 05 '20 at 07:36
  • And of course now that Edge is based on Chromium you can install Edge too (Mac / Windows / iOS / Android) – Simon Nov 06 '20 at 01:43
  • Instead of using incognito mode (where you can't preserve cookies across restarts) or using a different browser or its installation, you can simply run the same installation of Chrome/Chromium using the --user-data-dir=... option. – Ruslan Mar 31 '21 at 12:40
  • This! https://superuser.com/a/1638387/19079 – Simon Jun 10 '22 at 20:39
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To set Chrome's zoom per tab rather than per site, change "zoomSettingsScope" to "per-tab".

Unfortunately as of today (2017-10-05), that setting is only accessible through an extension. (It is not changeable via Chrome's settings and flags page, nor through policies.)

Jon Freed
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  • Update: zoomSettingsScope in Chrome 88 (on my macOS laptop) still appears to be "non edit-able" in the Chrome's settings view. Does anyone have a specific reference to an extension that enables settings changes... or some procedure to change this (zoomSettingsScope) setting? – Johnny Utahh Mar 01 '21 at 22:19
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If the native thing on the "Per Tab Zoom" extension puts you off, here is another extension which is currently working nicely for me to solve this: Zoom per tab.

Link: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/zoom-per-tab/mnoadkhbinhiblijcedoifbejfmmkdke/related?hl=en

Marcus Widerberg
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    +1 super light weight (only 3 lines of code) and does EXACTLY what's needed. – Eric Mutta Jun 12 '21 at 16:53
  • Does exactly what it says. Excellent! – Matt Nolan May 20 '22 at 13:39
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    This should be the accepted answer. I wish I'd discovered it sooner. It's literally only about 3 lines of code. I have multiple windows open on my site and zooming in and out is very important for testing. This changed my life in a click! https://github.com/xinan/zoom-per-tab/blob/main/background.js – Simon Jun 10 '22 at 20:37
  • This should be the accepted answer. It would have saved me a lot of time reading and trying others. If I had found this straightforward solution first, I'd have stayed with it w/o any second thoughts :) – jesusbriales Dec 06 '22 at 11:23
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I have only had to do this sparingly so my fix is kludgey. You can open up the element inspector and add a new zoom CSS style for the element of the page, like zoom: 0.5.

This doesn't persist on page loads, it doesn't cascade to iframes, and it acts oddly with other Chrome zooms.

david.muffley
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The extension Zoom Page WE - Chrome Web Store let you switch between per-tab and per-site zooming. Once you just per-tab, then all the existing mechanisms for changing zoom only apply to the current tab. It also allows you to zoom the full page or just zoom text size.

What it doesn't support, but I would like, is the ability to have per-site zooming and per-tab zooming at the same time somehow. I don't believe Chrome supports that even via extension.

Also see this article The ultimate Google Chrome Zoom guide - gHacks Tech News which talks about Chrome zoom options in general. It also mentions some other zoom extensions that might be useful.

studgeek
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  • Yes, this extension simply works. After installing, open the Options and set the zoom mode to "Per-Tab" and you're good to go. – oferei Jun 11 '20 at 08:29
  • Small reminder: when you first install this addon or change its settings (don't forget to use Save option, otherwise changes will not be applied) you may need to reload tabs on which you want to use this addon. – Pshemo Aug 11 '20 at 22:33
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If you aren't scared off by coding, what user3745840 wrote does work. As far as any restrictions or such, I have no idea. In the lower pane, in the Styles tab, either click where you want (the object to modify) the zoom or click the +. The code is very simple, and here are some examples for the variable X:

zoom: X;

 percentage - Scale by a percentage (75%, 23%, 165%)
 number - Will be converted to a percentage (1 = 100%; 1.5 = 150%;)
 remove the zoom and reset to 100% - zoom: 1;
Ryan
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While very silly and probably not what the original asker was hoping for, having 2 tabs on the same domain, but using 2 different chrome user profiles, worked for me.

Seth Lutske
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