Chromebook: How do you increase the size of the Chrome webbrowser GUI?

In a nut-shell there are two keyboard shortcuts for modifying a Chromebooks DPI settings:

  • Ctrl + Shift + +
  • Ctrl + Shift + -

When you use these keyboard shortcuts your DPI of the screen will change but your Chromebook will be always be using the native resolution of the LCD (in my case that native resolution is 1080p).

To verify that your machine is still using the native LCD screen resolution you can goto youtube to view an HD video and you will see 1080p pixels. Or open a 1080p image and see there are 1080p pixels. (I even went so far as creating a test image that has for all pixels black pixel then white pixel and when you view the image fullscreen you can see all the pixels.)


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I will comment briefly about something more advanced that is IMO confusing. Feel free to skip this if you aren't well versed in what "DPI" means and why it's important to run your screen at the "native" resolution:

The documentation and behavior for these two keyboard shortcuts is a little confusing IMO. The documentation refers to "Change screen resolution". When you:

  • Ctrl + Shift + +
    • the chromebook has a notifcation saying "your screen resolution has increased to NxM pixels
  • Ctrl + Shift + -
    • the chromebook has a notifcation saying "your screen resolution has decreased to NxM pixels

But then whenever you view an HD 1080p video ... the HD video displays the same way even when you do: Ctrl + Shift + - and your screen resolution is set to 600p or 800p.

The fact that your HD video still displays correctly shows that these settings are adjusting the DPI and not actually changing the screen resolution.

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