How to change font size in unity editor?

Hi all,

How to change font size in unity editor?

Thanks in advance

 

It's not possible.

--Eric

 

Thank you.

 

Unity really needs to fix this urgently.

Add a config option for font base size... how freaking HARD could it be?

I just switched to a new high-DPI machine. This is 2880x1620 pixels on a 15" IPS display.

Why did I choose so? So I can enjoy a higher-resolution game preview and no longer work under 1920x1080 which gives me a game-view of around 1136x640 since I don't like maximizing it, because tweaking in the inspector and hierarchy while running etc.

Well guess what, this is only possible for me if I tick the Disable display scaling on high DPI settings check-box option on the Compatibility tab of Unity's editor.exe Properties dialog.

If I do so: nothing, nothing is legible in Inspector/Hierarchy/Project/dialogs etc. I do have great eyesight! But high-DPI is, well, lots of dots per inch! News at eleven, right?

If I don't: then I don't even get full-HD (1080p) but less and worse: I get half-native resolution (1440x810!!) upscaled blurrily. Yes that's sadly how it works with Windows' hi-DPI scaling. So I upgraded to a shiny new high-resolution workhorse in order for Unity to downgrade my visual work experience and in-editor and Game View resolution.

Guys, this is getting ridiculous.. this is really super-embarrassing! Even before high-DPI displays (though they've been around for a few years if we're being honest) a simple font-size option would have been in order since dunno perhaps 2009? But now it's LONG EFFIN OVERDUE.

Now I don't suggest to be clever and put this into U5 as a "powerful new feature" like the LOOONG-OVERDUE 64-bit editor! This should have been a given years ago! Now you finally made it work and then some sales&marketing crook comes along and says "this is pretty crucial nowadays, so better put it in the v5 upgrade path"?

Now, this other long-overdue need for a "super simple base-font-size option" (you already ARE using some hardcoded font-size, just expose it, in the Windows registry or an .ini file if necessary, we mostly don't care for cosmetics here I think) should really arrive in 4.5.2 or 4.6 worst-case....

Sheeesh... guess I just throw out my marvellous brand-new Quadro-powered mobile workstation and grab a 3rd-hand ca. 2009 laptop so I can work with freaking Unity Engine and be able to read its GUI..

By the way I have two Pro licenses and many thousands invested in Asset Store over the last year. So my frustration is subjectively perhaps even say 8000 times as high as I would feel as a Free Indie user. But that's a subjective guess.

 

Adding a config that lets you choose a font size is trivial, obviously. Changing the whole of the editor layout code to work with different font sizes is not trivial. This is on our Editor team roadmap, but hasn't been started yet.

 

metaleap, if you look at the editor GUI API, you'll see that some parts of it use layouts (e.g. here), but some other parts use dimensions given in pixels (e.g. here). Since there's no way to know how tall and wide the editor font is from code, all code written using this kind of pixel-based measurement would die horribly if this font changed. Think of what would happen to the Unity editor itself (if it uses fixed dimensions internally), but also to all the stuff on the asset store which would also break ...

Pixel-based measurements with no awareness of a font size and fixed-size fonts on modern screens obviously look like an heresy to me as they do to you; CSS for example uses the 'em' unit along with pixel-based measurements to avoid such problems. I bet this is old stuff from the first unity versions that survived until now. Maybe it was too expensive to implement something better at that time ? I'm not surprised to learn that the Unity team will get it fixed soon, just be patient.

 

The fonts and icons look ugly as sin on retina displays. The size isn't so much of a problem because osx scale everything to something like 1440x900 but the quality is horrible. Is there not an easy way to replace the font with something of a higher quality or use the system font?

 

No, there is not an option at this time. We're working on it.

 

my eyes will be grateful

 

Good to hear that Unity team is working on it.

Nice feature to make the editor more comfortable and improves its usability.

 

Graham,
long 7 months have past since this thread, there are even threads with this simple request from 2011, you guys still thinking of this or has it been thrown to the blackhole bin?
i dont consider myself as a poor sighted fella but i sure dont have superman's eyesight. seriously bro.

look at people screaming for help since looooong time ago:
2011
http://feedback.unity3d.com/suggestions/change-font-size-in-unity-editor

2012
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/increase-editor-font-size.158045/

2014
http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/679375/can-you-change-unity-editor-font-and-font-size.html

or has it been started already and planning of releasing with unity 5?

come on man, damn editor fonts are ridiculously small, i actually use the magnify glass app from windows, this is getting really annoying..

please advice.

 

Would be a great new feature as I had to install windows magnifying glass for the first time in my life to read certain small x, y, z numbers for say, imported assets ...for example.

 

Bump. Got myself high res monitors and it is getting hard to read the gui text. This is getting more important with every day, since spread of high resolution monitors is on the rise. I assume, you unity devs are also not only 20 year old jet pilots with perfect vision Please invest some time into this.

Other than that, keep up the good work!

 

+1
I vote for this option too. In current state it's possible to use editor only on my old PC.

 

We know it needs to be done. And we will do it. Can't say when, though.

 

+1 vote for this feature

 

+1
I have to lower resolution because of font size.

 

(upvoting here isn't a useful as upvoting here.)

 

If you have problem with Unity font size then you have problems with all general font size. You can always change your OS default font size. For a 4K or 8K In Windows you can go to screen panel and make the fonts 125% or 150% bigger.

 

Fonts got a little bit bigger.

 

You do have a point to a certain extent, there usually needs to be a dedicated layout for most software to take full advantage of 4/8k. Unity could still do a better job of handling high DPI/rez screens though. Even at the most basic level, having a font and icons for high DPI screens would certainly make a difference.

The attached pic is from a 15" macbook pro retina, which is scaled to an effective resolution of 1440x900. There's a stark difference between the system font on the top bar and the unity font and icons in the editor. Since the editor is being used 100% of the time I would've thought it makes sense to have a clear font and icons that scale, even if they stay the same relative size. At the moment it all looks pixelated.

 

Unfortunately, this seems to be deferred, no matter where the votes are.

I appreciate that this is a lot of mind-numbing drudge work and nobody likes doing that, especially when it's for a feature that doesn't seem likely to impact sales, but this needs to be moved from "on the roadmap" to "in progress".

I do have eyesight problems. My browsers, etc are configured to use larger fonts.

Using Unity requires much squinting from a few centimeters away especially when running at 2560x1440 or higher.

 

Unfortunately many companies view the user experience as supplementary to the core functionality, especially when it comes to accessibility. I personally think them of parallel importance and more companies should consider how the interface effects fatigue and productivity. Regardless of what features you're using the interface is a gateway to everything. It may not necessarily impact the bottom line but it does impact the user. Ethically, it's important to design the interface to be as clear and accessible as possible across different screens for different users.

To be fair Unity does have quite a good interface considering all of what it has to display but that's not to say they could do better. And the one area that needs attention is the tiny pixelated font and general crispness of the icons. I wouldn't mind each component in the inspector having a slightly contrasting background to differentiate between each other as well, but can live without it . Epic have a done a good job with unreal in this respect, their interface has a more stylised appearance that works quite well.

I'd just be happy with a higher quality font that stays crisp on high dpi screens for now, even if it stays the same relative size as it is. Surely that can't be too much to ask. Maybe even a folder somewhere that will override the default font if the user puts a font of their own in there. At least then it's our fault if it doesn't look right.

 

+1 for choosing font size
upgraded to hires screen, can't really read the text anymore.

 

"I'd just be happy with a higher quality font that stays crisp on high dpi screens for now, even if it stays the same relative size as it is. Surely that can't be too much to ask. Maybe even a folder somewhere that will override the default font if the user puts a font of their own in there. At least then it's our fault if it doesn't look right."

@jackhearts, Make sure that your monitor is set for text instead of gaming. The fonts in the Unity Editor looked terrible and I went all through every Windows 10 font setting to try and make the fonts look better. But nothing helped (Monodevelop looked perfect, so I thought it was a Unity Editor problem). Anyway, I'm using a BénQ 1080p RL2460H Gaming monitor and the 'Display Pilot' app that came with it had different settings. I changed the Color setting from a Game Mode to Picture Mode: Standard and that made the fonts in Unity look beautiful...crisp, and clear.

 

(crosspost from feedback page)
I cannot use the unity editor because of bad eye strain the little text gives me, even with windows DPI settings up etc. It took me lot of time to write own tool but it will never match unity in features..

I would even pay for this to be done.
I would also accept a untested build of the unity editor with the bigger text size even if it wasn't working 100% correctly (like text overlapping in some places etc).

Please do add this finally for at least some people this is a big deal rly...

 

In the meantime people with vision problems and unity can use a screen magnifier. It's never as good but what can you do?

 

no... your answer is not accepted Digital Ape... There should be a simple preferencxes entry - set font

 

I'm on mac and the external screen I use doesn't have picture modes like that. I can't comment too much on the issue you had but I'd say if everything else looked fine except unity then it was still something wrong with unity causing problems in game mode.

The 2nd screen I use is an LG 23" @ 1920x1080 (not high dpi) so the problem isn't as obvious because the sharpness of text in other programs isn't hugely different. It's still small in unity, and still isn't that crisp. However, the problem is far more evident on my high dpi mac screen. It's not that unity text looks any worse, it's that everything else looks so much better. High fidelity graphics next to low, yuk.

It's an area I feel is lagging behind a bit. My eyeballs would certainly appreciate time spent refreshing the ui. For me the font is the biggest priority, followed by better icons, and then maybe some little designy things like custom bg colour for hierarchy elements and tabs, resizing a few bits and bobs, that sort of thing.

 

Please add this simple function to preference. This was asked 3 years ago....
It should not be as difficult as adding advanced features.

It is a very stupid decision of not using Unity Editor, just because the font size is too SMALL for high-resolution monitor????

Small fonts will hurt the EYES of programmers working long hours.
Please be considerate. Thanks.

 

If it would be that easy without breaking EVERYTING they would have done it already.
The unity interface system was build in a time that 1080p was not even a thing. So it's no wonder they did not head 4k displays in mind.

Yes they are working on it .... screaming about it will not make it go faster.

 

That's understandable in terms of re-sizing the actual elements. I'm sure increasing the font size is a can of worms requiring a lot of ui work. But it can't be that difficult to at least include a better quality font that renders clearly on high dpi screens, even if it stays the same size (I'm being a bit of a broken record with that statement). Or say, 'tick this to allow free re-sizing of fonts but don't complain if it messes up'.

Unity was released in 2005 for OSX only, at a time when imacs were already using 1440x900 and 1680x1050 rez screens and the following year they were up to 1920x1200. The majority of devs using this software are the ones most likely to h

 

I should've checked the roadmap, looks like retina/hdpi support is coming in 5.4 slated for march.

 

3 years and nothing? Please, see this on a 1080 full screen and the difference of the standard solid font of Windows and blurred font of the Editor, really hurts my eyes. Just tell us where is the config file, thanks, amazing editor.

 

There is no config file. See the previous post about the roadmap.

--Eric

 

cesar. I had that same exact blurry problem. I mean exact. Monodevelop fonts were crisp and clear, the Unity editor fonts were blurry. And I was very surprised that it was a problem with my new monitor. I just selected a different Picture Mode preset. e.g. Standard over RTS. And then Unity's fonts were beautiful too.

But my monitor is a BenQ gaming monitor so it may be different or may not work on yours.

 

I'm having exactly the same issue. The only solution i've came up with so far is changing my resolution before running unity. this does of course, make the text in mono childishly huge. but if the unity developers refuse to admit the problem and then actually fix it there's nothing else that can be done.

 

As mentioned, Retina/HDPI support for crisp fonts is on track for 5.4 around mid march

 

So here we are, March is almost ended, are there news on this?

 

and for Windows?

 

I'm 24 years old and almost blind with glasses on, so for me it's not a problem of "crispness" but of general size. At a glance, it doesn't seem like it's possible for Unity to have skins, despite that skins would also help - even if the text stays the same, black backgrounds with white text are much easier for everyone to read. For me personally, I have aniridia so my pupils don't contract, meaning all light is MUCH brighter for me than it is for you, tear ducts don't work properly and I sit closer to the computer so eyestrain comes more easily etc. (Yes, I wear sunglasses indoors, use eyedrops and invert / override colors on websites and text editors.) But, normal people also don't actually realize how strained their eyes are until they try something better.

About changing your own system font, modern Macs don't let you go to 800x600 resolution anymore which is what would be ideal, and you can't change the system font size past version OS9 (everything nowadays is far into OSX). Not everyone can buy, or has space for, a huge monitor (or maybe they just want to work on the go). Besides, at least from what I've seen, huge monitors are actually made for huge resolutions and work really badly with small ones.

I know that everyone who works on Unity sees it as a huge problem to let people change the font size. But, they're surely making lots of money. They'll make even more money if they make their program more accessible to other people... I would even use a watered-down version of Unity, with a completely different layout and tons of missing features and everything, just for the text size. (And for that one person who will wonder - no, I can't get eye surgery because the surgeries aren't advanced enough).

Anyway, it's very clear that Unity won't reprogram their program to make this possible, but if any of you are programmers yourself it's something to think about when you make your own product.

 

Changing my monitor display mode helped (ASUS V238, 1080p) - not great, but better. If you don't have a preset that helps, finding the right balance of contrast / brightness / color balance / saturation may improve things for you.

This was a frustrating first day with Unity that sent me to bed with a headache

 

...Yeah, seriously?
Can we just have a toggle? 2x and 4x or something? or even pick between 2k and 4k monitors?
It seriously doesnt need to be anything fancy or complicated.

 

Obviously Unity has no plans of doing this period. Just one lie after another year after tear.

 

Just replaced my monitor with 27 inch 1920x1080 display to make Unity more usable. Games, 3d view and some other things look pixelated, but Unity left me no choice

 

So on windows you have to switch to 1080 or touch monitor with your nose to see something? am I right?
Anybody noticed that it is not 2009 anymore, now you can buy 4k monitor pretty cheap and 2540x1440 was standard for me for couple years now. This is just sad :/

 

If you are on Windows 10 (and maybe 8 & 7) you can right-click on the desktop, choose Display Settings, the adjust the slider for "Change the size of text, apps, and other items. That makes Unity's fonts and UI bigger.

 

thanks TokyoDan but this change everything else with it and yet I want only unity to have bigger fonts and icons, other applications I use are fine and some of them scales beautifully to any resolution but not unity