How can I “disable” zoom on a mobile web page?

361
votes

I am creating a mobile web page that is basically a big form with several text inputs.

However (at least on my Android cellphone), every time I click on some input the whole page zooms there, obscuring the rest of the page. Is there some HTML or CSS command to disable this kind of zoom on moble web pages?

13
htmlcssmobile
As Greg said above, if I enter a mobile website which disables zooming, the first thing I usually do is to hit the back button (unless it's something I really have to view), and I'm sure I'm not the only one. Moreover, speaking from my experience, most of those websites which have zooming disabled also use small fonts which as a result makes reading the text difficult and very uncomfortable. – tomasz86
I agree that it shouldn't be disabled for most sites, but there are some use cases where you may want to disable the default zooming - such as mobile web games where you may want to override zooming to do something else. – Luke
You don't — If users want to zoom then let them do it. Besides: Chrome has an option to just ignore your request. – Martin
For Android Firefox users, there is the Always Zoom for Firefox add-on. Highly recommended. – Colin D Bennett
I am disabling zoom for a canvas project. Zooming could mess up the algorithms behind the animation. I agree, developers must consider usability prior to disabling zoom. Adjust font sizes and page structure accordingly. The vmin CSS measurement unit is helpful here. I also recommend using percentages and vh and vw. – www139

13 Answers

504
votes

This should be everything you need:

<meta name="viewport" 
      content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1.0, user-scalable=0">
176
votes

For those of you late to the party, kgutteridge's answer doesn't work for me and Benny Neugebauer's answer includes target-densitydpi (a feature that is being deprecated).

This however does work for me: 

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1.0, user-scalable=no" />
55
votes

There are a number of approaches here- and though the position is that typically users should not be restricted when it comes to zooming for accessibility purposes, there may be incidences where is it required:

Render the page at the width of the device, dont scale:

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">

Prevent scaling- and prevent the user from being able to zoom:

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, maximum-scale=1, user-scalable=no">

Removing all zooming, all scaling

<meta name="viewport" content="user-scalable=no, initial-scale=1, maximum-scale=1, minimum-scale=1, width=device-width, height=device-height, target-densitydpi=device-dpi" />
43
votes

Mobile browsers (most of them) require font-size in inputs to be 16px.

And since there is still no solution for initial issue, here's a pure CSS solution.

input[type="text"],
input[type="number"],
input[type="email"],
input[type="tel"],
input[type="password"] {
  font-size: 16px;
}

solves the issue. So you don't need to disable zoom and loose accessibility features of you site.

If your base font-size is not 16px or not 16px on mobiles, you can use media queries.

@media screen and (max-width: 767px) {
  input[type="text"],
  input[type="number"],
  input[type="email"],
  input[type="tel"],
  input[type="password"] {
    font-size: 16px;
  }
}
42
votes

You can use:

<head>
  <meta name="viewport" content="target-densitydpi=device-dpi, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=no" />
  ...
</head>

But please note that with Android 4.4 the property target-densitydpi is no longer supported. So for Android 4.4 and later the following is suggested as best practice:

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1, user-scalable=no" />
33
votes

Seems like just adding meta tags to index.html doesn't prevent page from zooming. Adding below style will do the magic. 

:root {
  touch-action: pan-x pan-y;
  height: 100% 
}

EDIT: Demo: https://no-mobile-zoom.stackblitz.io

14
votes

please try adding this meta-tag and style 

<meta content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1.0, user-scalable=no" name="viewport"/>


<style>
body{
        touch-action: manipulation;
    }
</style>
8
votes

Possible Solution for Web Apps: While zooming can not be disabled in iOS Safari anymore, it will be disabled when opening the site from a home screen shortcut.

Add these meta tags to declare your App as "Web App capable":

    <meta content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1.0, user-scalable=no" name="viewport" >
    <meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-capable" content="yes" >

However only use this feature if your app is self sustaining, as the forward/backward buttons and URL bar as well as the sharing options are disabled. (You can still swipe left and right though) This approach however enables quite the app like ux. The fullscreen browser only starts when the site is loaded from the homescreen. I also only got it to work after I included an apple-touch-icon-180x180.png in my root folder.

As a bonus, you probably also want to include a variant of this as well:

<meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-status-bar-style" content="black-translucent">
2
votes

You can accomplish the task by simply adding the following 'meta' element into your 'head':

<meta name="viewport" content="user-scalable=no">

Adding all the attributes like 'width','initial-scale', 'maximum-width', 'maximum-scale' might not work. Therefore, just add the above element.

1
votes
<script type="text/javascript">
document.addEventListener('touchmove', function (event) {
  if (event.scale !== 1) { event.preventDefault(); }
}, { passive: false });
</script>

Please Add the Script to Disable pinch, tap, focus Zoom

0
votes

The solution using a meta-tag did not work for me (tested on Chrome win10 and safari IOS 14.3), and I also believe that the concerns regarding accessibility, as mentioned by Jack and others, should be honored.

My solution is to disable zooming only on elements that are damaged by the default zoom.

I did this by registering event listeners for zoom-gestures and using event.preventDefault() to suppress the browsers default zoom-behavior.

This needs to be done with several events (touch gestures, mouse wheel and keys). The following snippet is an example for the mouse wheel and pinch gestures on touchpads:

noteSheetCanvas.addEventListener("wheel", e => {
        // suppress browsers default zoom-behavior:
        e.preventDefault();

        // execution my own custom zooming-behavior:
        if (e.deltaY > 0) {
            this._zoom(1);
        } else {
            this._zoom(-1);
        }
    });

How to detect touch gestures is described here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/11183333/1134856

I used this to keep the standard zooming behavior for most parts of my application and to define custom zooming-behavior on a canvas-element.

0
votes

Using this post and a few others I managed to sort this out so that is compatible with Android and iPhone/iPad/iPod using the following code. This is for PHP, you can use the same concept for any other language with string searches.

<?php //Device specific headers
$iPod    = stripos($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'],"iPod");
$iPhone  = stripos($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'],"iPhone");
$iPad    = stripos($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'],"iPad");
$Android = stripos($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'],"Android");
$webOS   = stripos($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'],"webOS");

if($iPhone || $iPod || $iPad){
    echo '<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1.0, user-scalable=0" />';
} else {
    echo '<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0" />';
}

?>

-2
votes
document.addEventListener('dblclick', (event) => {
    event.preventDefault()
}, { passive: false });