How-To

Making Chrome Usable on the Surface Pro 2

Although I use Internet Explorer 11 as my primary browser, I know a lot of you prefer Chrome (even though IE is faster, a topic for another day). The bad news is that Chrome is one of the apps that doesn’t support Windows 8.1’s DPI scaling settings, so everything looks blurry. You’ll need to follow the fix I detailed here to get rid of the blur. However, that will only result in Chrome going micro. Everything will just be way too small for use, even with the stylus!

Luckily, I have some tips to make things a little better for you. Click to enlarge images.

After you’ve applied the DPI fix to sharpen the text, you’ll need to go into Chrome’s settings (type in chrome://settings/ in your address bar), scroll all the way down, click ‘Show advanced settings’, and scroll down even further to Web Content. Set the Page Zoom setting to 150%, which matches the default Windows DPI setting on the Surface Pro 2.

Screenshot (8)

Next, type in chrome://flags/ in your address bar, and scroll all the way down to the ‘Touch Optimized UI’ setting and Enable it. This should make UI elements like icons and buttons a little bigger while not sacrificing clarity.

Screenshot (9)

Restart Chrome and you’re good to go!

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