Changing Mail App Message Font

[A1MB1G]

Does Message Font Impact What Recipient of Email Sees?

One complaint I have with the Mail app in MacOS is that the reader preview pane has a very small text size making it difficult to read incoming emails. The same is true when composing an email. I realize I can CMD+ to temporarily increase the font size for the particular email I'm viewing but if I change the "MESSAGE FONT" size in preferences for the Mail App, does it also impact the font that the recipient of the email sees?

I've searched all around and I'm definitely getting conflicting information. Some people say it does impact what the recipient sees and others are saying it doesn't. What's the truth here?

 

[hg.wells]

Have a look at Apples support article:

Change Fonts & Colors settings in Mail on Mac

In Mail on your Mac, change the fonts and font sizes for emails you write and receive.

support.apple.com

Message font is both, but is also dependent on how the recipient has their email client setup.

 

[halledise]

as far as i can tell the same applies today as from yesteryear in that there are fonts that are common across all platforms.
thus if you use one of these as your default in mail.app other os users should see it same-same.
from memory, some of them are andale, arial, courier, helvetica, verdana, georgia(?), monaco, times new roman, trebuchet and a couple of others.
boring but safe …

 

[A1MB1G]

Have a look at Apples support article:

Change Fonts & Colors settings in Mail on Mac

In Mail on your Mac, change the fonts and font sizes for emails you write and receive.

support.apple.com

Message font is both, but is also dependent on how the recipient has their email client setup.

Thanks for posting this link. I had already seen this but it still doesn’t really answer the question.

I want to increase the message font size but nowhere does it specify whether the font setting impacts how the recipient of the email sees the email.

I currently have all new emails set to rich text format.

 

[halledise]

irrespective of how large you make typeface on your end, recipient can always embiggen it from their end if it’s too small to read.
you could always try all caps, but that could be considered ‘shouting’.
that said, i’m unsure why this is a concern in the first place 🤓

 

[Ben J.]

In my experience, the font size setting in Mail preferences defines the font size in any mail I create. I have it set to 18, and when I get a reply with my original message quoted, it's bigger than the replyers reply text. I had it set to 24 at one time, but I hate to think what the recepiants of my mails thought - was I shouting at them?

I wish I could have everything just show bigger as default in Mail (and other apps) because I have a very low resolution on my displays (1600x900), and sit quite far away, but I've gotten used to hitting cmd-plus three times when I read an email. (You can customize the Mail toolbar to show this resizing tool.)

 

[chown33]

Maybe you can send yourself an email with the font set big, and see what happens when you read it.

 

[A1MB1G]

irrespective of how large you make typeface on your end, recipient can always embiggen it from their end if it’s too small to read.
you could always try all caps, but that could be considered ‘shouting’.
that said, i’m unsure why this is a concern in the first place 🤓

It's a concern because I only want the font size changed on my end to make the preview reading pane easier to read for me but don't want the text size changed on the recipient's side of things.

 

[A1MB1G]

In my experience, the font size setting in Mail preferences defines the font size in any mail I create. I have it set to 18, and when I get a reply with my original message quoted, it's bigger than the replyers reply text. I had it set to 24 at one time, but I hate to think what the recepiants of my mails thought - was I shouting at them?

I was afraid that would be the case. Really wish there a way to only change the font size for me so I can more easily see the text while retaining the default font size for what the recipient of my email sees. I realize I can temporarily use CMD+ to increase the size when reading emails but it's a pain to do that on every email. I also don't want the text increased for any other part of MacOS, just the reading pane in Mac Mail.

 

[halledise]

it seems to me that you've just solved your own issue.
if it's only for your benefit, then any changes you make your end won't necessarily be reflected at recipient(s) end.
try sending your preferred sized typeface email to a known windows/linux user, then ask them for a screenshot of what it looks like on their system