How do I increase Big Sur system font size?

If you're referring to the "Menu bar size:" in the Accessibility/Display preference pane I agree that setting it to Large doesn't do diddly. Changing the screen resolution a bit does help.

No accessibility system fonts is pretty disappointing, you need to change resolution. No pick and choose unfortunately

I doubt they will Stan, but as with you I expressed my opinion with feedback. I have a Mac Mini hooked to a 1080 resolution 22" monitor and the smaller fonts are more then a annoyance. I have yet to get used to them, it's not that I cannot read them or that they are fuzzy. The text is probably clearer then with Catalina but in the end it feels harder on my eyes. Since I duel boot Windows 10 with BootCamp I find myself using Windows more often because the font's are larger and it overall just is easier on my eyes. A few say removing the ability to turn off font smoothing is also a issue and a post that suggest using a terminal command to turn off smoothing isn't working. I guess you can lower resolution or if using a retina screen increasing scaling percent to make everything bigger. I am not even sure the font's are really smaller? But I do know things like the Menu bar is definitely shorter I guess to make more desktop space available. I am hoping someone smarter then me can at least create a app or a terminal command that might help this issue.

I think a lot of missteps in Big Sur design have left me wondering if I can even tolerate it on a retina screen. I had to go back to Catalina for awhile but honestly this has faults on many levels of design. From lack of contrast between text and background to simply making smaller text more difficult to see. Probably not of concern to a younger designer with perfect eye sight. Sub Pixel Antialiasing has been gone since Mojave which is widely documented. Anything less then a 4K screen has issues with small fonts.

But Big Sur has even negatively affected the retina quality by trying to reduce contrast between text and background. Even adding to the issue with transparency. It fancy's up the user interface but at what legibility cost? Not everyone will notice, so Apple probably won't address it. At least some setting in accessibility can increase contrast and make it better. It's the first time many have had to use these features which does show it is a problem for some.

Yes screen resolution is the most effective solution. I posted on this awhile back. Some of our colleagues suggested that one contacts apple feedback and apple accessibility. The latter actually acknowledged the email. So on a judgement of aesthetics, I am not confident that a few opinions matter that much, framed as an issue of accessibility, this will have a lot more purchase as it should. So feedback and lets us hope next years software will address this

I didn't want to change my screen resolution, but I found that you can directly change the font size in Finder. Go to View > Show View Options and a little window will pop up with a dropdown where you can select the Text Size. Individual programs may also allow you to change the font size setting.

In System Preferences, go to Accessibility - besides the increase font size - increase contrast really helped my eyes. It's not as nice looking but makes it easier to read. Like turning on a light to read print on paper. I'm getting by but no longer use the laptop screen much, as my old 1920 x 1200 - 24 inch monitor increases font size quite a bit. Probably 150%. If you have a newer MacBook like me with the USB-c ports it's a little harder to find cables to monitors. I found one that turns my 2010 27 inch iMac into a monitor. It's great! a bit smaller font than the 24 inch screen though. As for using the MacBook by itself (which is what it's rally for) the increase contrast made a big difference. 1200 deep monitors are nearly impossible to find. If you get a 24 or better yet a 27 inch 1920x1080 resolution your fonts will be HUGE. May as well buy a MacMini though. M1 is awesome.

Err, agree with several other posters, the options here do little to help those of us with aging eyes. Major drop-the-ball in "improved" UI.

On upgrading my first system to Big Sur, I notice the "empty space" around items increased -- i.e. the window-top "title bar" thingy got a lot taller, but the font inside it is no more readable in this wash of extra empty space. (Seems to be a UI design trend in recent years to show less information on a given piece of display real-estate, and it's not changeable, and I don't see that as progress.).

The check-box to "increase contrast" helps in one sense, as it darkens some icons and type that were washed-out and faded. Thanks, I do like this option.

But changing contrast **does not make the font bigger.**

The distinction between menu font size, at SysPrefs -> Accessibility -> Display -> font "Default" and "Large" is comically so subtle and so restricted to just one part of the menu texts and no system texts (sidebar fonts and lists of data in FINDER app) -- just take a screen shot with the two options and look side-by-side, and you can hardly notice the change. Nothing changes the font sizes used under icons. And so on.

So the only option is the nuclear option, display resolution -- Haven't tried that yet. Can't we have nice moderate-size icons with nice readable system fonts under them to our preference, without resorting to making my display look like chunky text-based MSDOS?

For now, I won't upgrade any more systems from Catalina to Big Sur.

I have the same Big Sur font problem and go into Display and all that is there are Display, Color, Night Shift, Resolution, etc.

There is no adjustment for font size at all. Where do I go from here. I have an 11" MacBook Air.

Same problem as Emily has, just an even smaller font (if that's possible?) with my 11" MacBook Air.

I also could not improve anything with Stan's suggestion.

We need an Update for the issue ASAP, please.

I would be more generous - this is a huge software change and there is no 100% perfect roll out across its 100 million? user base. I agree restoring is not attractive and that is the last thing I would do and only under duress. I posted that the Apple help line identified the adjusting scale option that Old Toad has so helpfully screen shot and it works well. I have only installed Big Sur on my 27 iMac however and maybe the big screen allows for big fonts. I have yet to install on a 13" Air which is seven years old and a similarly old 21 inch iMac. If we get past Covid, I will look in store at the Apple Silicon version of Air and see how the font rendering works on that.

If you are annoyed at the font size, I can only repeat that which others have said on the thread: do write to apple feedback and even better, write to apple accessibility. The latter sent an acknowledgement of the email. I think Apple takes accessibility seriously and my very polite email was about small fonts and me being a bit older than most of its customers.

Feb 5th, I tried upgrading to Big Sur again after downgrading because of this issue on release day ( or when I could first upgrade the next day). The reason I upgraded again is that I thought it could have just been me, I was a bit tired by the time I was able to upgrade. Turns out, it really is the font, as well as some other elements, displayed in Big Sur is just too small. Now I could adjust the individual settings of EVERY app to make them all easier on my eyes except, why should I? I didn't have this problem in macOS Catalina, so I am downgrading again. I also plan on using https://apple.com/feedback as much as I can to get the point across.

I figure the reason most items are smaller has to do with how retina in Big Sur is setup, it looks fine when I put the screen as close to my face as the iPad Pro. But that's not how close I leave the Macbook Pro 16" to my face. The worst part of all of this is it's only off by a small percent, just small enough to start causing eye strain.

Greetings! Not sure what is happening for you or what OS you are using. But the instructions of increasing the overall system font size I shared is what works. That will also increase the size of the font on the menu as well. If you just want to increase size on the menu you can follow what Lisa6352 wrote above: "In System Preferences, go to Accessibility --> Display and you can increase the size of the menu bar." Hope this helps! :-)

What Stan from London said is the way. Once you go into System Preferences, if you have your second monitor hooked up, a "Display Preferences" window should open up on that monitor that gives you that same "Scaled" option to select. You might actually have to go back to your computers monitor and re-do it there again too. Once you plug in an extra display the system can sometimes default to a standard setting. So you might have to do the "Scaled" option for both screens again. That is what happened to me. A pain at first but once you do it once then it should be set forever more. :-)

Thanks for the info. Is there anyway to change the font and/or its size? This is painful to look at for me!