Catch browser's “zoom” event in JavaScript

Question

Is it possible to detect, using JavaScript, when the user changes the zoom in a page? I simply want to catch a "zoom" event and respond to it (similar to window.onresize event).

Thanks.

Answer 1

There's no way to actively detect if there's a zoom. I found a good entry here on how you can attempt to implement it.

I’ve found two ways of detecting the zoom level. One way to detect zoom level changes relies on the fact that percentage values are not zoomed. A percentage value is relative to the viewport width, and thus unaffected by page zoom. If you insert two elements, one with a position in percentages, and one with the same position in pixels, they’ll move apart when the page is zoomed. Find the ratio between the positions of both elements and you’ve got the zoom level. See test case. http://web.archive.org/web/20080723161031/http://novemberborn.net/javascript/page-zoom-ff3

You could also do it using the tools of the above post. The problem is you're more or less making educated guesses on whether or not the page has zoomed. This will work better in some browsers than other.

There's no way to tell if the page is zoomed if they load your page while zoomed.

Answer 2

I'm using this piece of JavaScript to react to Zoom "events".
It polls the window width. (As somewhat suggested on this page (which Ian Elliott linked to): http://novemberborn.net/javascript/page-zoom-ff3 [archive])

Tested with Chrome, Firefox 3.6 and Opera, not IE.

Regards, Magnus

var zoomListeners = [];

(function(){
  // Poll the pixel width of the window; invoke zoom listeners
  // if the width has been changed.
  var lastWidth = 0;
  function pollZoomFireEvent() {
    var widthNow = jQuery(window).width();
    if (lastWidth == widthNow) return;
    lastWidth = widthNow;
    // Length changed, user must have zoomed, invoke listeners.
    for (i = zoomListeners.length - 1; i >= 0; --i) {
      zoomListeners[i]();
    }
  }
  setInterval(pollZoomFireEvent, 100);
})();

Answer 3

Good news everyone some people! Newer browsers will trigger a window resize event when the zoom is changed.

Answer 4

This works for me:

        var deviceXDPI = screen.deviceXDPI;
        setInterval(function(){
            if(screen.deviceXDPI != deviceXDPI){
                deviceXDPI = screen.deviceXDPI;
                ... there was a resize ...
            }
        }, 500);

It's only needed on IE8. All the other browsers naturally generate a resize event.

Answer 5

There is a nifty plugin built from yonran that can do the detection. Here is his previously answered question on StackOverflow. It works for most of the browsers. Application is as simple as this:

window.onresize = function onresize() {
  var r = DetectZoom.ratios();
  zoomLevel.innerHTML =
    "Zoom level: " + r.zoom +
    (r.zoom !== r.devicePxPerCssPx
        ? "; device to CSS pixel ratio: " + r.devicePxPerCssPx
        : "");
}

Demo

Answer 6

i had this problem and finally. I’ve got a solution. it is simple and works for me. ("Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64;Gecko/20100101 Firefox/50.0).

px ratio = ratio of physical pixel to css px. if any one zoom, the viewport pxes reduce and should be fit the screen so the ratio must get bigger. but in window resizing, screen size reduces as well as pxes. so the ratio will maintain.

zooming: trigger windows.resize event --> and change px_ratio resizing: trigger windows.resize event --> doesn’t change px_ratio

//for zoom detection
px_ratio = window.devicePixelRatio || window.screen.availWidth / document.documentElement.clientWidth;

$(window).resize(function(){isZooming();});

function isZooming(){
    var newPx_ratio = window.devicePixelRatio || window.screen.availWidth / document.documentElement.clientWidth;
    if(newPx_ratio != px_ratio){
        px_ratio = newPx_ratio;
        console.log("zooming");
        return true;
    }else{
        console.log("just resizing");
        return false;
    }
}

Answer 7

I'd like to suggest an improvement to previous solution with tracking changes to window width. Instead of keeping your own array of event listeners you can use existing javascript event system and trigger your own event upon width change, and bind event handlers to it.

$(window).bind('myZoomEvent', function() { ... });

function pollZoomFireEvent() 
{ 

    if ( ... width changed ... ) {
        $(window).trigger('myZoomEvent');
    }
}

Throttle/debounce can help with reducing the rate of calls of your handler.

Answer 8

On iOS 10 it is possible to add an event listener to the touchmove event and to detect, if the page is zoomed with the current event.

var prevZoomFactorX;
var prevZoomFactorY;
element.addEventListener("touchmove", (ev) => {
  let zoomFactorX = document.documentElement.clientWidth / window.innerWidth;
  let zoomFactorY = document.documentElement.clientHeight / window.innerHeight;
  let pageHasZoom = !(zoomFactorX === 1 && zoomFactorY === 1);

  if(pageHasZoom) {
    // page is zoomed
    
    if(zoomFactorX !== prevZoomFactorX || zoomFactorY !== prevZoomFactorY) {
      // page is zoomed with this event
    }
  }
  prevZoomFactorX = zoomFactorX;
  prevZoomFactorY = zoomFactorY;
});

Answer 9

You can also get the text resize events, and the zoom factor by injecting a div containing at least a non-breakable space (possibly, hidden), and regularly checking its height. If the height changes, the text size has changed, (and you know how much - this also fires, incidentally, if the window gets zoomed in full-page mode, and you still will get the correct zoom factor, with the same height / height ratio).

Answer 10

<script>
var zoomv = function() {
  if(topRightqs.style.width=='200px){
  alert ("zoom");
  }
};
zoomv();
</script>

Answer 11

Although this is a 9 yr old question, the problem persists!

I have been detecting resize while excluding zoom in a project, so I edited my code to make it work to detect both resize and zoom exclusive from one another. It works most of the time, so if most is good enough for your project, then this should be helpful! It detects zooming 100% of the time in what I've tested so far. The only issue is that if the user gets crazy (ie. spastically resizing the window) or the window lags it may fire as a zoom instead of a window resize.

It works by detecting a change in window.outerWidth or window.outerHeight as window resizing while detecting a change in window.innerWidth or window.innerHeight independent from window resizing as a zoom.

//init object to store window properties
var windowSize = {
  w: window.outerWidth,
  h: window.outerHeight,
  iw: window.innerWidth,
  ih: window.innerHeight
};

window.addEventListener("resize", function() {
  //if window resizes
  if (window.outerWidth !== windowSize.w || window.outerHeight !== windowSize.h) {
    windowSize.w = window.outerWidth; // update object with current window properties
    windowSize.h = window.outerHeight;
    windowSize.iw = window.innerWidth;
    windowSize.ih = window.innerHeight;
    console.log("you're resizing"); //output
  }
  //if the window doesn't resize but the content inside does by + or - 5%
  else if (window.innerWidth + window.innerWidth * .05 < windowSize.iw ||
    window.innerWidth - window.innerWidth * .05 > windowSize.iw) {
    console.log("you're zooming")
    windowSize.iw = window.innerWidth;
  }
}, false);

Note: My solution is like KajMagnus's, but this has worked better for me.

Answer 12

I'am replying to a 3 year old link but I guess here's a more acceptable answer,

Create .css file as,

@media screen and (max-width: 1000px) 
{
       // things you want to trigger when the screen is zoomed
}

EG:-

@media screen and (max-width: 1000px) 
{
    .classname
    {
          font-size:10px;
    }
}

The above code makes the size of the font '10px' when the screen is zoomed to approximately 125%. You can check for different zoom level by changing the value of '1000px'.