Message font too small in Yosemite

Cheers Orc4hire, I was not aware that reduce transparency had that effect on the Messages fonts picker.

Yes, I can confirm I had already turned on 'Reduce Transparency' in Accessibility before making fonts size changes in Messages - Preferences.

I mean, of course transparency is going to change the Messages preferences. Perfectly obvious, right?

(Yer killin' me, Apple. Yer killin' me.)

"The default is to just have the font size slider. If you go into System Preferences, Accessibility, though, and turn on 'Reduce transparency' the preferences in Messages change to allow you to pick a particular font. (Close Messages before making the change in System Preferences.)

Yes, the actual Preferences dialogue in Messages changes depending on what your transparency setting is." -Orc4hire

I TOTALLY see this as representative of just how intuitive* Apple REALLY is... LOL!

Or, perhaps, as "Think Different."

Massive Thanks for knowing this.

SERIOUSLY.

As soon as I returned the "reduce transparency" check to its box, my font choice and size were returned to what they had been. Interestingly, other font size choices elsewhere on my computer returned to where I had set them for various applications and uses. I think that I had un-checked the box when messing about with various system pref's after reading something that another forum user had complained about and I was trying to sort a fix. I wondered why my Messages font and size wonked out... had absolutely NO idea that transparency was tied to font size.

crazy.

Those sly Apple people.

What WILL they think of next?

snicker.

p.s.

however DID you sort that answer?

ESP?

CHEERS to you!

*not even a little bit thinly veiled sarcasm. this was BLATANT sarcasm. and only the bit next to the asterisk. the rest of the post was not sarcastic. I'm only making this footnote so that no very sensitive persons become nervous about just what I meant by that.

To be honest, I was just as *** as everyone else when I saw wrxtasy's post. I'd tried messing with the Messenger fonts before and I knew there was only a slider there. I wasn't even thinking about that when I found this thread (I was searching for how to unscrew the fonts in Thunderbird). But it was marked as having answered the question, so I looked again and sure enough the font options were there.

At that point I was really confused, but figured that one of the other options I'd been messing with must change that. Tried toggling Dark mode first, but that didn't do it, so I tried Transparency and found the little joke that those wacky pranksters at Apple have played on us.

Good joke, Apple, good joke.

Of course, it's probably a 'bug' that they're going to 'fix' in 10.10.1, to make sure no one can accidentally change the fonts.

ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!

yup.

or they'll fix our fix so that we have to turn it back off to get things to work properly again.

...or maybe they'll go and attach it to the audio volume adjust slider in systems pref's. That would certainly be hiding it better.

All kidding aside.... a little more direct customization,(with an official way to go about it and everything!), wouldn't hurt things. I actually kind of like the transparency being...well...TRANSPARENT, and I kind of hate having to sacrifice that in order to get the font and size I want in a not transparency based application. Some of us had been remarking elsewhere that sliders for adjusting the degree of transparency in menu bars and dock might be a better go than all on or all off.... and that system wide fonts could be more custom-chosen as well. At least a system-friendly selection of 3 or 4....with a couple size options as well. We're not talking Apple-threatening mayhem here, we're just just trying to keep people from going blind.....or back to MS.

If you do happen to find that we can choose system wide font,(and size), attached to something like, oh, say..... cursor speed and rendering, DO post it up in here.

Many of us will be thankful for it.

Oh, there's no way they're going to give us that many customization options. And I'm okay with that, really, as long as they just make the default not awful. Right now, though, they have a system font that looks great on Retina displays, and like **** on everything else. Unfortunately, most of what they sell, and most of what people are using is 'everything else.'

What they should do, if they can't come up with a font that works on both, is use one system font on Retina displays and another on non-Retina. Then I might be able to actually see things on my 11" MB Air. I have some hope that they'll moderate a few of these changes, as they've done before. If they don't, I'm probably going to go back to Mavericks. Yosemite isn't giving me anything but eye strain.

In the meantime, maybe there's something in Parental Controls that'll increase the size of the system font....

Yes, thank you! 😀

oh, SNAP!

Why didn't I even THINK about Parental Controls?

the possibilities are ENDLESS!

Thanks to Orc4hire for this workaround. I was able to change the text entry font as well as the display fonts as described. It's actually a little bit crazier. After making the font changes, I went back to System Preferences > Accessibility and unchecked the "reduce transparency" box. When I reopened Messages it was back to the tiny font with only the slider in Preferences. Then I rechecked the box and Messages opened with the larger font in both places. So Messages keeps a record of your desired font, it just will not use that font if the "reduce transparency" box is unchecked.

What the heck does the font size in Messages have to do with transparency?

"What the heck does the font size in Messages have to do with transparency?"

BINGO!!!

You hit that nail squarely.

I think that they are using the whole font size and contrast and transparency as being part of the Accessibility portion of the OS.

Apparently, we're supposed to KNOW that.

Would be great if it was possible to have both. I want the transparency but also the ability to change font.

Ever since i upgraded to Yosemite, the font displayed in Messages is a big, thick hard to read font. Almost looks like Helvetica Neue Bold Condensed. There is no option to change it and it is SUPER annoying! Anyone have any idea why this is happening and how I can fix it?

This worked! Thanks so much!

Your answer was perfect! If you hadn't told me to reduce the transparency, I would not have figured it out! Now, do you have a solution for increasing the font in Contacts?! I am able to increase the phone number only on a contact card, but what about the whole contact site! The list of names are too small and so are the card themselves.

This worked well. However, I still have trouble when trying to see what I'm typing in Messages. Also, is there a way to change the background colour of the text I send? It's green on white which has absolutely no contrast.