My browsers won't use my full screen resolution and also use different resolutions between them

Question

My screen resolution is actually 3200x1800, but when I'm in a browser it acts like I have a smaller resolution. How do I get my browsers to use my full resolution?

On Chrome it's using 1280x720, and on IE it's using 1600x900. According to whatismyscreenresolution.com, which is showing different values for different browsers. I took a screenshot of them and verified that my resolution is 3200x1800 as that is the pixels in the bitmap.

I'm on a laptop with no monitor plugged in. My zoom in both browsers is at 100%. I've tried zooming out below 100% but then the text is unreadable and pixellated. I've tried restarting. Windows 8.1. I've tried the chrome extension OptiZoom and it does nothing. document.body.clientWidth gives 1247, and I want it to give 3200.

Answer 1

Possible Problem

This is most likely an issue caused by Window 8.1 "Display Scaling" feature. See a relevant post in the Google Chrome forum.

Possible Solution

Try disabling this feature for your browsers. For example, locate the Chrome executable which is commonly found in %ProgramFiles(x86)%/Google/Chrome/Application/. Right click the file, select "Properties" and then under the "Compatibility" tab tick the box saying "Disable display scaling on high DPI settings"

Answer 2

Well, it’s pretty obvious this is yet another example of DPI scaling gone horribly wrong.

Chrome is party to blame too. According to this article, there are (well, were) some possible workarounds.

• Disable DPI scaling in Chrome’s compatibility settings (Properties on executable or shortcuts)—last resort “solution”
• Go to chrome://flags and enable experimental Windows HiDPI support. (Gone now, apparently)

• Load the following .reg file:

  Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
  
  [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google\Chrome\Profile]
  "high-dpi-support"=dword:00000001

A word of warning though: HiDPI is under development and has issues. If you cannot live with that, I suggest you try an alternate browser like Firefox. It’s supposed to have better DPI scaling support.

Answer 3

Remember that display resolution is configurable, it's different from native resolution.

Another better choice is http://myscreenchecker.com, not only check for screen display resolution, but also for checking your screen color, screen health with 15 basic color, including: black, white, red, green, blue, ...