Unable to adjust System Settings font size on MacBook Air

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Level 1

32 points

Unable to adjust System Settings font size on MacBook Air

I have a new MacBook Air, with the Tahoe OS. On my old mid-2015 MacBook Pro with Monterey I could read the text in all the System Settings windows - the font size was just big enough.

Tahoe gives me a Systems Settings font size that is way too small for me (I'm 63 with your standard old eyes, so what used to just fine at 45 can sometimes be unreadable even with reading glasses.) I found the setting that allows me to set the standard font for all sorts of other applications - I've set my default Finder font to a nice size for me. But I can't find a way to enlarge the fonts Systems Settings itself.

MacBook Air 15″, macOS 26.2

Posted on Feb 2, 2026 2:56 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

neuroanatomist

Level 9

56,319 points

Feb 2, 2026 3:28 PM in response to qrs136

In System Settings > Appearance, you can set the Sidebar icon size to large, but that only increases the text size of the sidebar, not the individual settings panes.

You can also go to Accessibility > Zoom and enable one of those options. For example, here I enabled a double-tap with three fingers to activate the Picture-in-Picture Zoom style...and I learned that the zoom does not show up in a screenshot so I took an iPhone pic instead:

Finally, you can increase the scale up the whole display as Grant Bennet-Alder suggests.

You can provide feedback to Apple on this, as well: Feedback - macOS - Apple

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Answer 2

etresoft

Level 9

56,816 points

Feb 2, 2026 4:38 PM in response to qrs136

You can go to System Settings > Accessibility > Display > Text > Text size and change it to something larger. This doesn't affect all, or even most, text in System Settings. But it does increase the size of text in the sidebar.

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Answer 3

Feb 2, 2026 3:19 PM in response to qrs136

Recent MacBook Air has a Retina display with so many pixels, you can not see individual pixels with the naked eye. Without some changes, text can be microscopic. Because of this, Apple offers SCALED resolution settings for that display to improve legibility of text.

Text is rendered into an off screen buffer at a much larger size, then scaled back down to reasonable size for display. The result is very clear text with smooth edges and no stair-steps or other artifacts.

I suggest you choose a different setting for SCALED display:

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Answer 4

qrs136 Author

Level 1

32 points

Feb 2, 2026 5:29 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Thanks - I changed it to 1280 x 828. That makes the sidebar in System Settings really readable. The panes are a smaller font than the sidebar, which is interesting. I'll try it for a while. The largest setting tells me that some of my apps might not fit on the screen, which I'd rather not do. We'll see!

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