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How do I increase the font size for a specific application in Ubuntu 18.04 running Gnome?

rated 0 times [ 3] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 3623 / 1 Year ago, fri, april 14, 2023, 6:22:03

I installed the Unity Editor on my Thinkpad x1 Carbon, which has a resolution of 2560 x 1440, and is considered HiDPI. In order to deal with very small font sizes, I installed gnome-tweak-tools and set my Fonts Scaling Factor to 1.34. This has resulted in an acceptable font size in every application I have tried so far, with some tweaks in programs like Firefox.

However, the Unity Editor doesn't have a font size modifier for its UI. It looks like this on my machine:

The font size is unreadably small.

I see that under gnome-tweak-tools, I can set font sizes specifically for things such as "Window Title" or "Document," but not, for example, "Unity Editor."

I could set "Scaling Factor" very high but this makes other programs have unacceptably large fonts.

I could modify, under the regular Settings app, under Displays, the Scale property, from 100% to 200%, but this makes every other application have a terribly bloated, nearly unusably large UI.

How can I change the font size for only one application, specifically, Unity Editor?

EDIT: By the way, there does not appear to be any intention on the Unity Editor engineering team to implement a font size changer: https://forum.unity.com/threads/how-to-change-font-size-in-unity-editor.149481/

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mentpengu

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2 Years ago

answered 1 Year ago fulerio · Accepted Answer

Create a script call ue (Unity Editor). Place within it:

#!/bin/bash

xrandr --dpi 144

unity-editor "$@"    # Or whatever the program is you want to run

Mark the script as executable using:

chmod a+x ue

Call the script using

./ue

Or replace ./ with the directory name if not in the current directory

Or leave off ./ if you have placed ue in your $PATH like ~/bin or /usr/local/bin

Adjust 144 to 192 if you want it double magnification. Smaller if you want less magnification.

Your screen may blink when script starts up but that is normal.

TL;DR

The default DPI (Dots Per Inch) is 96. When set to 100 font size increased by 4% which might not be noticeable. To confirm initial DPI use one of these commands:

$ xdpyinfo | grep dots

  resolution:    96x96 dots per inch



$ grep DPI /var/log/Xorg.0.log

[     9.555] (--) NVIDIA(0): DPI set to (43, 44); computed from "UseEdidDpi" X config

[     9.761] (==) modeset(G0): DPI set to (96, 96)

In the above script you can reset xrandr back to default DPI of 96 by adding the following line to the bottom:

xrandr --dpi 96

I've never encountered a need to do this, but you might.