The Shifting Scale
Google Chrome attempts to remember your preferences for specific websites to provide a better browsing experience. If you visit a website and find the text too small, you might press Ctrl (or Command on Mac) and the ‘+’ key to zoom in. Chrome saves this zoom level specifically for that domain. The problem arises when Chrome applies this automatically: if you visit a completely different page on that same website months later, Chrome will automatically change the zoom level back to that saved setting, which might break the layout of the new page or appear jarringly large compared to the rest of your browsing session.
Resetting Default Zoom
To ensure a consistent viewing experience and stop Google Chrome from automatically changing the zoom level based on past visits to a domain, you must clear your saved zoom settings.
Click the three vertical dots in the top-right corner of Chrome and select Settings. In the left-hand menu, click on Privacy and security. In the main panel, click on Site settings. Scroll all the way down to the bottom of the page and click to expand the Additional content settings menu. Within this expanded list, locate and click on Zoom levels. You will now see a complete list of every single website where Chrome has saved a custom zoom level. To stop the automatic zooming for a specific site, click the ‘X’ next to its name. To ensure a clean slate, go through the entire list and click the ‘X’ for every entry. Chrome will now render all those sites at the default 100% scale.