Apple Mail Viewing Font too Small

yhetehyewwesasDgsdghdtyjehdgn wrote:

But then it shows up huge for the recipient

No, it should not do that, it should only look bigger for you. Try mailing a short message to a friend with a huge font set in those Mail Settings and ask them if it looks huge.

Normally the only way to make the recipient see the font size you choose is to set it manually in each outgoing message individually.

Red October wrote:

Hi Tom, I have done that, what am I looking for?

Thanks!

Looking at your outgoing in the Sent folder, and doing View > Message > Raw Source, you should see code like that below (where I chose Marker Felt at 72), for your recipient's system to know what font/size choices you made.

Do you see something like that?

Normally Mail (at least through Ventura) will not create this code if you just set font/size in Mail > Settings > Fonts & Colors > Message Font. It will only do so if you manually set the font in the new message pane for each outgoing individually.

The recipient received the email in a their system font size and font in their outlook client But exactly as I sent it in their Apple mail client.

Outlook has a setting where the recipient can choose to ignore the font/size in those html codes and use what the recipient wants instead. Mail (at least through Ventura), does not, so it normally sees whatever the html codes stipulate, if they are present.

I cannot run Sonoma, so I don't know if these Mail behaviors have changed in the new version.

But then it shows up huge for the recipient

Red October wrote:

And before anybody suggest changing the font size in setting these are reflected in the email received at the other end, I have tested this with many, many colleagues and customers (over 50 of them, most of whom use Outlook)

That's interesting, since it should not happen as far as I know. Could you please test this for me?

Just for the test, in mail > preferences > fonts and colors, set your message font to a large size of Marker Felt and compose a short message. Send it somewhere harmless. Then go to your Sent folder in Mail and select that message and do View > Message > Raw Source and have a look at the html codes. Do you see the name of the font and the size you had set mentioned there? Thanks!

Red October wrote:

are you saying that in principle no matter what I set my "Message font" to in mail settings/fonts & colours that is just how I see messages appear on the screen. It is only if I change the font within the composition window that the changes will be reflected in what the recipient sees on theirs?

Yes, exactly. You should be able to make your font locally as large as you want via Mail settings/fonts & colors without affecting what your recipients see. Using an Exchange account should not change the html codes which Mail is creating.

When you do want to have recipients see your font, you have to do it in the composition window.

Mail's behavior in this area is frequently lamented by users who for some reason need to make sure all recipients read things with a particular font and size, because it requires a lot of extra work. For them Outlook is a better choice, because it does allow you set a default font/size which will be included in all outgoings' html codes.

I have been frustrated by this for SOO LONGGGG. Please Apple just let us zoom the view when composing a message the same way it can be zoomed in the message viewer. Meanwhile they give us an AI assistant that nobody needs.

yhetehyewwesasDgsdghdtyjehdgn wrote:

I have been frustrated by this for SOO LONGGGG. Please Apple just let us zoom

You don’t need zoom, just set the size you want in Mail / settings / fonts +colors / message font

Using the Accessibility text adjustment doesn't seem to effect the recipient's view, but it does also change the size of the inbox itself (the scrolling list of emails) which is kind of ugly and unnecessary, but an ok compromise....

WOOOWWW ok I think you might be right? Just sent a test email to my gmail account and it looks normal. I prob tried this a decade ago and and showed up huge, but at some point they updated it? Or do all email viewers use their own view settings now?

Either way big thanks.

You should be able to go to settings, Display and Brightness, and then click Text Size. From there select how big of a font you want it. Then go back to Apple Mail and it should be a much bigger size. If not try restarting the device.

yhetehyewwesasDgsdghdtyjehdgn wrote:

I prob tried this a decade ago and and showed up huge, but at some point they updated it? Or do all email viewers use their own view settings now?

Mail has always worked this way. Actually many users hate that, and have asked Apple to change it, because they want to easily set a default font and size that their recipients will have to see, which is a feature they can have in MS Outlook.

I don't think Mail can change the font/size of incomings whose senders have used html codes to specify those things. Outlook however lets you remove all those codes and see incomings with your own preferred fonts.

I did set the font size that I wanted (12pt Arial), but it is WAY too small to be readable on my screen–just a few pixels tall. In order to compose mail where I can read it, I need to set the font to be at least 32pt. Then the recipient sees ONE INCH TALL FONT ON THEIR SCREEN.

phoo wrote:

Then the recipient sees ONE INCH TALL FONT ON THEIR SCREEN.

No, it should not do that, it should only look bigger for you. Try mailing a short message to a friend with a huge font set in Mail > Settings > Fonts and Colors > Message font and ask them if it looks huge.

Normally the only way to make the recipient see the font size you choose is to set it manually in each outgoing message individually.