Disable zoom on input focus in Android webpage Disable zoom on input focus in Android webpage android android

Disable zoom on input focus in Android webpage


The following worked for me (Android Galaxy S2):

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, height=device-height,  initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=no;user-scalable=0;"/>


Not possible!

I've got some bad news for you all. It's now been 6 months and no one has correctly answered the question.

Also I've finished working on that project and employer.

I'm afraid to say it, but exactly what I asked for is impossible. Sorry peoples. But I'm going to leave the question alive so people can see the other options.


Scale Issues Cause Zoom on Input Focus

There is a great difficulty in sizing the content for different screen resolutions and sizes, which ultimately is the cause of this zoom issue.

Most mobile browsers have a trigger on input focus (that you can't over-ride without difficulty):

if (zoom-level < 1)   zoom to 1.5   center focused input relative to screen

*yes, that was way over-simplified.

Myth of meta-tag scale fixes.

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, user-scalable=no">All such viewport settings will not prevent the input-focus zoom if you are zoomed-out.These will also not over-ride any other html, body, or element sizing that would push the window to width wider than the screen.

Primary Cause

Using a window or body size larger than the device screen dimensions.

Consider the standard screen-size of most of the Galaxy line of Android smartphones: 360 x 650.If your document body, or window, is defined to be larger than that (let's say 1024 wide to make it obvious), a few things may happen:

  1. The browser may auto-zoom out, to fit the width to the screen.
    1. The user may do the above.
    2. You may have done the above.
  2. The browser will restore the zoom-level on subsequent visits to the page.
  3. You're now viewing the content at ~0.35x zoom.

Initial State 1x

When loaded, the page won't fit. Some browsers may zoom-out to fit the window, but the user most certainly will. Additionally, if you zoomed-out on this page once, the browser will store the zoom-level.

Zoom Out to Fit 0.35x

Once zoomed out, the width will fit nicely, and a page with more vertical area will fill out the screen quite nicely... but...

Notice that the browser is now in a state where text and input (sized for normal 1x zoom) would be way too small to read, thus triggers a usability behavior of zooming on the input fields when they get focus.

Zoom on Input-Focus 1.5x

Typical behavior in the above case, is to zoom to 1.5x, to ensure input visibility. The result (if you've styled everything to look better when zoomed-out, or for the larger screen) is less than desirable.

Solution 1

Use a combination of css media rules, device-detection, or whatever best suits your situation.Set the window and body to a size that fills the screen-space, without exceeding it.

  • This is why so many people have success with forcing input text-size to 16px;
    • once you do that, its clear that you're WAY zoomed out.
    • it also has the added benefit of tricking the browser into allowing slightly zoomed out windows to not trigger the focus-zoom.

Solution 2

Use the meta viewport, but then be careful with css widths.

<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, minimum-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1.0, user-scalable=no"/>
  • When using this method, you must do one of the following:
    • Only use percentages for widths.
    • Define an em width, and only use em and % for widths.
    • see Solution 1 for using px widths.

Solution 3

jQuery.mobile $.mobile.zoom.disable();

Just make sure you start developing with it from the start, and not from the middle.