Increase global font size

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  • Is there a way to increase the font size globally on my bangle2?
    The text of the notifications is way way too small for me to read.
    I saw some posts from 2-3 years ago about work being done on this. I wonder is anything else has been done since?

  • The problem is the majority of apps expect text to be a certain size so you can't just increase it globally.

    However we are slowly adding functionality to different apps. For example I just merged some new Launcher changes that allow you to scale up text there, and you can now install a new app that changes the built-in menus to a different style with much larger text too

  • I am really excited about this watch. I received mine last week and made some good progress getting it configured. My biggest challenge now is the size of the text. I don't need a lot of fancy functionality in a smartwatch. But usable notifications are one thing that is important for me. When I get notifications from my iPhone, the text is too small for me to read it. Part of that is my old eyes, I am sure. For me, it is a fun project watch for now, until the notifications are readible enough for me to put it into daily service. Thanks for your hard work on it, Gordon.

  • The ability to scale the font for each individual application would be great!

  • My eyes are also not as young as they used to be, and I've also found the notification text a bit small. I also think the dithering on the dark green title block hinders readability too - I have been meaning to tinker with the Messages app code to change it to a solid green to see if it looked better, but I have not been able to try that yet.

  • The ability to scale the font for each individual application would be great!

    It would just result in pretty much no applications being usable I'm afraid :(

    But yes, messages could definitely be bigger (in fact for the title at least it does use a big font unless it thinks there is too much text, then it moves to a smaller font). I think it's one of these things that is personal taste, so maybe a global 'font size' setting that apps can choose to honour or ignore.

  • For me, its more of an issue that the fonts on notifications are different. I get push notifications from discord or when Android recognizes a song, the font is HUGE and then I get other notifications from app like mlb.com/twitch/gmail and the font is tiny.

  • @Gordon - I like what you have done with the default launcher. Having a Menu Font setting for things like Messages, Settings and the default Launcher definitely the way to go. Desktop is my
    personal favourite launcher for the B2. Would be good if the Vector font could go up to 38 or 30. Seems limited to stop at 20 when there is a built in 12x20 font, obviously it will have to work with the other limitions the apps / screenspace.

  • Good point. Will test and pull request changes. I mainly thought of people scaling down to fit more on the screen. I'll see how far I can push it without breaking anything.
    At the moment it scales the logo and space around the text in line with the font. I wonder if this could be done better.

    Edit: just tested anything over 24/25 and everything is getting pushed off the screen to right due to the scaled up image. Perhaps a cap on how big the image can get or even a toggle to display them or not?
    Another idea would be to marquee text which spans further than the display width (further edit: this would look terrible a menu full of sideways scrolling text. This is why you shouldn't work on things at 4am)

  • Maybe go up to 23 then.

  • I assume the notification text could be made larger, AND that it would be possible to scroll or page-down, to see what doesn't fit onto one screen?

  • yes - there are already some requests open for that.

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Increase global font size

Posted by Avatar for Akisame @Akisame

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