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Increasing Font Size for iMac G5

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macrumors newbie
Original poster
I know this is a stupid question but I've got to know! And I can already hear the snickering. 😱

I just got my first Mac this week and am totally excited and nervous at the same time! It is a lot to learn and un-learn.

I cannot figure out how to increase the font size for the overall system. I found how to Zoom, but I want to be able to see a larger uniform font size on all the screens all the time. Every application looks like it's set at 8 pt, and my eyes are already hurting me!

In Finder I found View/Show View Options/Text Size, but that only increases the size in Finder from what I can tell.

And since I have a lot of reading/learning to do on this machine, I NEED to see the words at a normal size.

Thanks.
 
Congrats on the iMac G5...I just got mine on Wednesday...I got the 20" with 768 MB Ram....anyway, I'm not sitting at it right now, so I can't remember for sure, but I believe you can go to the System Preferences in order to change the font size...perhaps its under "Appearance" but I can't say for certain.
 
Unfortunately I don't think there is a way to increase the font size overall. I've been looking for it for awhile and no luck. Someone else in the IRC channel asked awhile back because he had vision problems but the resolution + font size made things impossible to read. Well the only solution I could come up with is lowering the resolution.. but that doesn't make things look good, it makes things grainy on an LCD. If anyone does know how to do this, i'd like to know because if I get a machine for my parents, i know they'll have a hard time reading a lot of the font sizes on the screen and is a big blow if it's not possible.
 
Other users are also hunting how to change the overall font size on the new G5 iMac according to messages on the Apple/Support/Discussion forums. I've got no experience yet with the G5, but it seems the program TinkerTool allowed setting overall font size--anyone tried that? You might check it out on VersionTracker or email the author about it.
 
Thanks for the suggestions.

I had already tried System Prefs/Appearance (as was suggested), thinking that would be the logical place and it didn't have what I needed.

Before I start loading 3rd party software (TinkerTool), I want to better understand the OS first in case I make a major blunder. I want to know where to go to fix/undo it. But I am going to check it out and bookmark it for later.

I'm only 3 days into Apple-land and it's a lot to learn. Doing the easy stuff first, loading all my digital pics into iPhoto and organizing. 😀
 
What you want isn't built in to Mac OS X (as a preference pane anyway). As was mentioned above, TinkerTool is what you need. It tweaks all the little software knobs that exist in the OS, but don't have a graphical interface. It will only change settings for the current user, and it has a handy "Defaults" button to return things to their stock configuration (so you can't mess things up). I've used TinkerTool for quite a while, and have never had any problems. Maybe one day Apple will get smart about this and provide something by default, but for now Jobs' will holds supreme. Your only other option would be to find all of the hidden files that contain the font preferences and edit them by hand - but it's far easier to just use TinkerTool to do it for you.
 
This resolution independent UI will have its start in Tiger (10.4) I hear, but I think they said it won't be fully functional 'til 10.5.
 
If it is websites that are coming out small, you can change the font size quickly, that is if you are using Safari. On the Safari tool bar at the top when its open, click "View", then "Text Size". There should now be a small and large A next to reload button. You can click on the large A to make the size of the fonts on any website larger, and the small one to make them smaller.
 
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