Text padding/double-spacing makes "big sur" nearly unusable. Any way to fix?

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Level 2

433 points

Text padding/double-spacing makes "big sur" nearly unusable. Any way to fix?

I just upgraded to "Big Sur" and my computer is basically unusable. It seems that the default places enormous white space/padding around icons, buttons, and text. Some examples are:

I cannot see most of my system tray icons because they now take up literarily half of my menu bar (for 7 icons plus the time)
Mail only shows about 14 messages at a time in list view because everything seems to be now double-spaced (or triple-spaced?), and that's if I want to use a preview pane... which is left with only enough space to show 4 lines of message text given that the header is also double-spaced
Mail can't even fit a reply button or search text field in the application header. So literally the first thing you ever want to do for any message (reply) takes menu navigation.
Most drop-down menus now seem to take up nearly the whole screen vertically because menu items seem to be double or triple spaced too...
In Safari, this text box I'm typing this question in right now is only showing 8 lines of text because there's so much extra space between each line(!)
And the whole thing looks like a bad homework assignment from someone taking a beginner class in Java swing.

(This is on a MacBook, using what I thought was system default font size.)

I'm assuming this is some weird setting issue and should be fixable, but I can't seem to find it. Any pointers?

Thanks,

Mike

Posted on Dec 10, 2020 9:25 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Old Toad

Level 10

210,591 points

Dec 11, 2020 3:24 PM in response to Mike G.

Boot into Safe Mode by booting with the Shift key held down and check there to see if the problem persists. Reboot normally and test again.

NOTE: Safe Mode boot can take up to 10 minutes as it's doing the following;

• Verifies your startup disk and attempts to repair directory issues, if needed

• Loads only required kernel extensions (prevents 3rd party kernel/extensions from loading)

• Prevents Startup Items and Login Items from opening automatically

• Disables user-installed fonts

• Deletes font caches, kernel cache, and other system cache files

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Answer 2

Barney-15E

Level 10

116,662 points

Dec 10, 2020 11:00 AM in response to Mike G.

I think you have something else wrong not related to "Big Sur" adding white space.

I have six Status Menu items plus time with date and it only takes up about a fifth of my menu bar. (I'm assuming when you say "system tray" you mean the Status Menu area of the menu bar.)

If I set Mail to Column Layout, 14 messages occupy about half of my screen height, with the preview in the rest. The header lines appear to have reasonable leading. I have all the buttons and other controls visible, and about 14 lines of text.

Someone at Apple does appear to like white space (see this forum for example), but I don't see it being as bad as you describe.

What is your Display resolution? Maybe it isn't as high as it could be.

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Answer 3

Mike G. Author

Level 2

433 points

Dec 11, 2020 2:23 PM in response to Barney-15E

I'm not sure how to tell the display resolution. It's a 2017 MacBook 12" with retina display. So the resolution should be quite high. I have not (knowingly) changed anything about the resolution or font size from the defaults. I checked accessibility settings but nothing stood out as available to make the screen useable.

Yeah, for the menu bar, I just checked with a ruler and my 4 system tray icons (plus time and username) take up 40% of the width of my screen. But that's not nearly as bad as the Mail application. I just created a new email and in the default new message window size the headers (from/to/subject) take up literally 60% of the window height... and it's even worse in my mailbox view, as mentioned in my initial message.

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Answer 4

Barney-15E

Level 10

116,662 points

Dec 11, 2020 5:46 PM in response to Mike G.

Open Displays System Preferences and make sure it is set to Default for display.

Your size descriptions don't sound right to me.

I checked on my Catalina Mac and for the most part, the spacing between most of the Status Menu icons looks similar, though some are tight. Now, my Catalina Mac display is nowhere near the resolution of my Big Sure MacBook Pro, so it may be a bit wider on Big Sur. I would guess that the spacing is almost the width of the icons (eyeball), maybe 80%-90%.

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Answer 5

q2021

Level 1

4 points

Jan 22, 2021 3:26 AM in response to Mike G.

Well, at he moment you can't change it. It is a design change, imposed by Apple.

You are apparently a 'power user' since you don't have just 1icon in the menu bar and want to be different than the standard...

Please fill a feature request and hope Apple adds the option to give users what they need/want.

https://www.apple.com/feedback/macbook.html

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Answer 6

Jan 24, 2021 12:04 AM in response to Mike G.

User Mike G is quite right, the spacing or padding around things in Big Sur has been greatly increased. I read somewhere it may be prep for a touch screen Mac. You can use a tool like "BarTender" to reduce the space between icons in the top-of-screen Menu Bar, that worked well for me. Or Dozer, or there are many others, search "Big Sur menu bar icon spacing" or similar. People have been unhappy with the default spacing for quite a few releases it seems. I guess it comes from users who have hundreds of extra tools in their Menu Bar.

You can change the appearance of the Menu Bar in System Preferences / Accessibility / Display / Menu Bar Size. I found this useful to get it back to something closer to Mojave / Catalina appearance. It's weird how ordinary stylistic preferences are migrating into Accessibility.

Re "double" or at least "1.5" spacing of lines in system menus, I haven't found a hack to reduce it yet, but I'd like to. Let me know if you find one. I only upgraded to Big Sur 11.1 a couple of weeks ago, ie. early Jan 2021.

Ciao.

[Edited by Moderator]

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Text padding/double-spacing makes "big sur" nearly unusable. Any way to fix?

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