Yosemite: how to increase menu font size?

Have any of you tried installing the San Francisco font as per this article:

http://www.cultofmac.com/303628/add-apple-watchs-custom-font-mac/

Other system fonts which are available include:

Fira - https://github.com/jenskutilek/FiraSystemFontReplacement

Any font you like: https://github.com/dtinth/YosemiteSystemFontPatcher

These instructions ARE all pretty much for people comfortable with technical stuff, but as long as you have backups you can't do much harm to anything. If the new system font is ruining your computer experience to the extent where you can't comfortably use the computer, you CAN change it.

Also remember that you can decrease the display resolution to increase the size of everything which will help with visibility.

To be able to read the screen on my new MBP, I needed to employ many kludges to Yosemite which took hours of googling and experimentation to get right, but I had to give up using Safari entirely because the kludge which reverts the system font back to Lucida Grande:

https://schreiberstein.co.uk/

works on the Bookmarks bar in FireFox but not on the Bookmarks bar in Safari. Apparently they hardwired Helvetica Neue into Safari so it’s just plain illegible even though with my regular eyeglasses I am corrected to 20/20 in my good eye and when necessary wear a patch over my bad eye. None of the magnification steps which enlarge the print in the webpage itself have any effect on the Bookmarks bar, which I rely on for navigation via its dropdown menus which I’ve organized over years of use.

Fortunately I am retired, but hundreds and hundreds, maybe thousands, of complaints on the ‘net are from working professionals who have been running their businesses or occupations for years on Macs and have a large investment in their Mac equipment and software and are furious because they are squinting to try to read their screens!

So today I ordered a pair of eyeglasses with continuously adjustable lenses just to use for Yosemite. Maybe they will help too.

Apple has done its loyal older longtime Mac users, and its reputation, a great disservice failing to warn us not to install their “upgrade” - Yosemite - in its present incarnation, on non-retina display Macs, even brand new ones like mine. Instead of a warning, we were indiscriminately notified via software that we -should- install it! I had no trouble reading the screen on my 3-4 year old MBP running Mavericks, but now I have been struggling to use and try to enjoy my brand-new MBP with non-Retina display! Kind of ridiculous.

:-(

Glad I could help.

Here is a better link to keep up with his versions: https://github.com/schreiberstein/lucidagrandeyosemite

I'm using 1.3 now and it seems to be quite stable.

I wish I had written down all the other "adjustments" also known as kludges but I didn't start out thinking that so many would be required, or I would offer to list those too, but you probably found them already as they are options built into the system, unlike the very special one mentioned above. But it seems to me that Yosemite should have included one single button to make all these other adjustments, instead of having to scrounge all through System Preferences, Finder Preferences etc. and some of these options are not even intuitively named.

For example, to mention one, the option to increase the font size in the Finder's sidebar doesn't even mention "font" but if you go to System Preferences/General and use the dropdown menu in "Sidebar Icon Size" it will also change the font size of the entries themselves as well. Don't know why they chose this label for the option as most people want to read the entries in the sidebar and could care less about the icons! I don't even have icons in my Finder's sidebar.

Best wishes, Nate

tömell,

I just heard this back from Schreiberstein about the Safari problem in response to my question to him about it:

"Thanks for your feedback! Regarding the Safari-issue : It appears to be hardwired. I guess there is nothing we could do about it."

(That's why I had to abandon Safari - it hurts for me to keep trying to squint to read the Bookmarks' so-called Favorites Bar entries in Safari.)

Regards, Nate 😀

I just bought a 27 inch iMac for my vision impaired dad, who has serious problems reading the default text and icons. I have decreased the screen resolution, which helps some, but there *HAS* to be a way to increase default fonts and sizes globally for all applications. Even crappy windows can do this. After spending nearly 2k on his dream computer my dad is incredibly disappointed and frustrated. Prior to this computer he had been using Windows PC's for over ten years with no issues.

Does anyone know of any after market apps that can do this?

tömell.

If you switch from Safari to FireFox, you can add this Add-On: No-Squint to enlarge the contents of each webpage individually and remember it; and you can add this Add-On: Theme Font & Size Changer to control the size, font and bold the FireFox menubars like Bookmarks, etc.

Safari does not allow this type of Extension (Add-On).)

Regards, Nate 😀

Here is the url for the Theme Font and Size Changer in FireFox:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/theme-font-size-changer/

Nate

Hi guys, Same problem with MENU TEXT SIZE. I did have success by going to PREFERENCES, DISPLAY

I now have HUGE TEXT FONT SIZE for my FINDER

Go to: DISPLAY Select "SCALED" rather than Best for Display

1280 x 800 WILL INCREASE TEXT MORE

1024 x 640 WILL GIVE the LARGEST TEXT for FINDER MENU

Hope this solves some of your visual problems. It has for me. By the way, I have gleaned some good information from your posts. Thanks, Julia from StLouis

I think I've read that Apple doesn't read the user forums. Let's hope that someone is reading the feedback you can do through Pages and Numbers. If there's a similar menu item in Safari I have unearthed it yet. I've long thought that all the alpha and beta testers must be twenty-somethings with no idea how their vision will change over the years—much less that anyone who has other vision issues.

Probably the answer is that more people need to tell Apple what works for different ages and point out that just because we've reached the advanced age of 30+ doesn't mean we no longer use a computer.

If you open system preferences in Mac, and click on displays. You have a choice of Revolution: "Default for display", and "Scaled." The default one is the tiny one we are all unable to read. So click on "Scaled", and then try all the choices until you find the one you can read. It solves everything for me. I can now adjust the other font sizes in my mail program down a bit, as this display resolution "ups" the sizes across the board. Why on earth this is not more well-publicized and known I have no idea. It certainly solves everything for me. I can read my menu bars now. Whew.

Barby Gale wrote:

If you open system preferences in Mac, and click on displays. You have a choice of Revolution: "Default for display", and "Scaled." The default one is the tiny one we are all unable to read. So click on "Scaled", and then try all the choices until you find the one you can read. It solves everything for me. I can now adjust the other font sizes in my mail program down a bit, as this display resolution "ups" the sizes across the board. Why on earth this is not more well-publicized and known I have no idea. It certainly solves everything for me. I can read my menu bars now. Whew.

I know that your suggestion is very well-intentioned, but with all due respect I suggest that trying to resolve the problem in this manner is a mistake. If you are going to rely on this method, it is the equivalent of you going out and buying what we used to call a "dimestore-quality" monitor and attaching it to your computer, because that's what you are doing - cheapening the display quality of your expensive, high quality monitor down to something you could buy for $19.95 off the hobbyist's rack at Fry's. In the long run, relying on that diminished-quality display will adversely affect your eyesight, etc. You just won't be aware of it's happening until it does.

Respectfully,

Nate