Windows – Why are the Developer Tools always scaled up when I start Chrome

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In my Chrome browser on one computer, the Developer Tools are zoomed to a larger font size, and I can't (permanently) set it back to normal!

After opening a fresh instance of the browser and going to a normal page (eg. Google home page), the browser looks fine. However, when I open the Developer Tools panel, that panel is zoomed in so that the font is large. I can click into the panel and press ctrl0 to return it to a normal size. But when I close and reopen Chrome, it is back to the zoomed size again. This has been a problem for a few months, over multiple versions.

How can I permanently set the zoom in the Developer Tools panel back to normal?

Chrome Version: 23.0.1271.22 beta-m
OS: Windows 7, 64bit

Edit:

I've found that using ctrl+ and ctrl- seem to be effective between sessions, but NOT when it is first opened. So, I'm currently at a +2 zoom when I open the Developer Tools. If I press ctrl+ once, I go to +3. If I then restart the browser, my Developer Tools appears again at +2, but pressing ctrl+ puts me to +4. Similarly, if I presss ctrl- twice, I see it at 0 zoom. When I reopen the browser, it shows as +2 zoom again, but pressing ctrl+ once takes me to +1 (since it somehow thinks it is at 0 zoom). Confusing!

Best Answer

The following worked for me:

  1. Close all Chrome windows

  2. Edit the Preferences file in your Google Chrome profile.

    On Linux this is ~/.config/google-chrome/Default/Preferences; on Windows it will be in C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default (or possibly C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Roaming\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default))

  3. Locate the setting "per_host_zoom_levels"

  4. Remove the line that starts with "devtools". This was set to -1 in my profile (my inspector was zoomed out by default).