Fonts too large on KDE Desktop

Fonts (site as well as the UI) are too large: I have noticed all websites appear to have over sized fonts in Brave. Things look okay if I manually reduce the fontsize (by pressing the ctrl and minus buttons on the keyboard) to 67%. I verified this by opening the same web page in Brave, Chromium, and FireFox to do a side-by-side comparison. I confirmed font sizes were reset in all browsers and took a screenshot for this bug report.

It wasn’t until I performed this comparison that I noticed that tab sizes etc. are also larger on Brave. And while the larger UI elements are fine, websites themselves appearing larger is a problem.

Please see the attached screenshot. I have annotated the screenshot to add browser names.

How can this issue be reproduced?

  1. Open any website in Brave, as well as another browser for comparison.
  2. Compare the two windows.

Expected result:
Web sites look consistent with their intended font size.

Brave Version( check About Brave): v1.57.57

Additional Information:

  • Please note that I don’t see this behavior on MacOS where website fonts, as well as the browser itself look similar between Brave and Chrome; this problem seems to be limited to Linux (Debian 12, KDE).
  • Another interesting data point. On a maximized window, Brave returns window.screen.availWidth as 2283 while Chrome returns 3840. This being a 4k monitor, 3840 is the correct number. This is why the screenshot shows a different layout of the page in Brave vs. Chrome/FF. The page in Brave is rendering a smaller media breakpoint.

Have you tried checking your settings under brave://settings/appearance? And is this all sites or just some?

image

Greetings Saoiray, thanks for looking into this.

  • I reset preferences before I took the screenshots to make sure I was at default zoom levels etc. My font size is to Medium, and page zoom is set to 100%.
  • I’m seeing this same behavior with all websites.

Settings

Yahoo homepage in Brave vs. Chromium

@simiacode Part of me is wanting to assume it might be browser settings on Chromium or extensions (as I at least see you using extensions on Chromium). However, my testing can only be on Windows and I know you said that this doesn’t occur on MacOS and all, sayin git’s just a KDE issue from what you can see.

I’ll tag in @Mattches in hopes he can test or have some more feedback for you.

NOTE

Personally, if I saw your screenshots on Chromium vs Brave on last post and had to say which font was messed up, I would have said Chromium was. That’s way too small to read, lol. I’d honestly think you have the chromium one on Small and now the Brave on Medium.

NOTE 2
Also, testing just now, I don’ t even know how the font is supposed to work anymore. Originally I tested while like here on community.brave.com and I thought somewhere else. When I changed the font size, it changed on the websites as well. But just testing it on Yahoo and Reddit, the sites didn’t change at all when I changed font size. So yeah, definitely will hope @Mattches can clarify things a bit on the settings as well.

If the font sizes weren’t showing normal in the other browsers I’d say it was system settings causing this but now I’m not sure. I’ll have to ask someone on Linux team to check and see why this might be the case.

I think it might be more useful to look at why Brave thinks availWidth is 2277px instead of 3840px.

I have taken a new set of screenshots in incognito mode to make sure it’s not an extension causing the discrepancy. Also, a screenshot of Chromium’s appearance settings to show that it is set to medium font and 100% zoom.

Appearance settings

Brave and Chroium side by side on 4k desktop

screen.availWidth

All browsers full screen on 4k desktop (3840x2160)

Brave

Shows availWidth as 2277; should be 3840 as there are no scrollbars etc.

Chromium

Shows availWidth as 3840

Firefox

Shows availWidth as 3840

It sounds like no one else has reported this issue :sweat_smile:. So to make sure it’s not something related to my system settings etc., I will purge and reinstall Brave tonight and see if anything changes.

Thank you both for continuing to investigate this report :+1:.

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