From paints to food products, solvent evaporation is ubiquitous and critically impacts the rheological properties of fluids and viscoelastic materials. In both cases, the evaporation of the solvent causes a change in the volume of the sample, which makes any rheological measurement particularly difficult with traditional shear geometries. In 2017, a CRPP team proposed to monitor in a time-resolved manner the rheological properties of a sample subjected to slow evaporation in a parallel plate geometry using a controlled zero normal force (ZNF) protocol 1. Solvent evaporation from the sample leads to a decrease in the normal force, compensated at all times by a decrease in the gap between the plates, the sample of smaller volume keeping a constant contact area with the plates. In collaboration with teams from MIT and the University of Lyon, the method was validated under oscillatory and continuous shear measurements by precisely monitoring the viscosity of water-glycerol mixtures down to a relative volume decrease of up to 70%. The ZNF protocol applied to the drying of dispersions of silica nanoparticles also made it possible to monitor in real time the evolution of the viscoelastic properties of the suspension and the glass transition induced by evaporation. This work shows that a zero normal force protocol allows a time-resolved rheological monitoring of viscoelastic systems undergoing slow variations in volume.