How to make Control Panel's text bigger without using DPI settings?

Hi.
I want to make the text on my whole screen and system readable by making it bigger. Only the text.

Windows has a DPI setting but it affects everything including icons and window sizes, which results in some windows and dialogs not fitting on the screen.

The options in personalize don't affect the Control Panel and and system window's text.

Using magnifier is the closest thing to what I want I've seen at the moment but it's not very nice. Since it's zomming in and not actually making things bigger, text looks pixelated or blurry and it's really ugly.

There must be a real solution to making all the text bigger including control panel's but I haven't found it yet. Does anyone know?
Thanks

Edit: Here are some pictures to show the parts that don't increase font size...
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Given up trying to embed the images. I have attached them. Can they be downloaded/seen?
Green means can be changed
Red means cannot be changed

Hi,
Besides using View by large icons ?

That only affects the icons, and even if it did affect the text as well, it wouldn't change anything outside that area, e.g. the side categories, each panel applet's options, systtem windows, etc

Other than what ThrashZone has suggested I don't think what you want is possible. There is a fundamental problem here. You can't arbitrarily make text bigger without also making the containing elements, such as dialog boxes, push buttons, etc, larger as well. Outside of very constrained limits this would result in clipped text. The only way to avoid this is to make everything larger, by setting a larger DPI.

@LMiller7 are you saying windows control panel's text is hard coded or something like that? is this a limitation by design? If what you say is the case, then how do you prevent DPI settings from affecting window sizes?

EDIT: I think I've seen clipped text in other situations before but I would like to see how it looks in the control panel

LMiller7 are you saying windows control panel's text is hard coded or something like that?

Click to expand...

Not at all. But concepts of text size are complex and I will not try to explain them here.

As for preventing DPI settings from changing windows sizes, no way. That is one of the primary reasons why DPI settings were provided for.

The bottom line is as I explained. Increasing text size without also increasing the size of other elements will result in clipped text. There is no way to avoid this.

LMiller7 said:

As for preventing DPI settings from changing windows sizes, no way. That is one of the primary reasons why DPI settings were provided for.

Click to expand...

Besides very small unresizable windows or windows that don't save the last size used, what benefit is there in making windows bigger by default if they can be resized and the new size is saved?

Anyway, it's very dissappointing that there's no solution for such a common problem. Maybe Windows just wasn't designed to be used by people with bad eyesight on screens with 768 vertical pixels or less without having a degrading experience.
Or maybe this is because they added this sort of accessibility/customization options in later versions like WIn8 or Win10. Do you (or anyone else) by chance know if on Windows 8 or 10 it is possible to do what I asked about here? If so, I might upgrade

Hi,
Yep well the other way is more complex
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/282-window-color-appearance-change.html

No shame in using a larger dpi
I use 119% dpi.

I think I'm gonna ask Brink about this. Maybe he knows of a hidden trick to achieve my goal.

I think 118% DPI setting is enough for some windows like VLC settings to not fit on the screen

Hi,
I don't believe vlc has ever had a very good interface experience
But you should be able to resize the window/ close and reopen and it should remember the new size.

Yeah, but the minimum window size is still too big for the screen. Same with several other applications.

I can create a custom theme and change the font size.

You will need to do 1 of these 2 ways of Enabling custom themes for it to work.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/34579-enabling-custom-themes-windows-7-a.html
Or
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/28377-theme-how-apply-custom-themes.html?filter

What size of font do you want?

Let me know.
Jerry

Hey, Thanks Bongo. I will try those methods.
In the green areas of my screenshots the font is Segoe UI 14 but I think I'd go for size 16 if nothing gets messed up.

Give this a try, if it's to big let me know. Some Properties and Personalization text cannot be changed.

Download and extract the zip folder at the bottom of this post to your Desktop.

Put both the Segoe UI 16 theme folder and the Segoe UI 16.theme file in C:\Windows\Resources\Themes


It will show up under Installed Themes as Segoe UI 16 in Personalization.


Jerry

Well, it's pretty good. I noticed this uses some sort of retro grey theme. I don't mind it, but is it necessary?

Only in some parts does it seem to be too big:
- In the "address bar" of explorer and control panel windows (first screenshot green box)
- When you are on Computer on explorer, the system info that displays at the bottom (second screenshot bottom red box)
- On the taskbar when there are combined windows as in several explorer windows, when you click on the icon to see the list of opened windows.

There may be more more places where the text doesn't fit well but I've only noticed the above ones so far. We could try a size of 14 to see if things start to fit. If you want new screenshots, including a screenshot for the last item let me know

Additionally, control panel applets/dialogs don't get changed at all (e.g. still tiny text), like Folder Options dialog (third screenshot). Are these the properties you say cannot be changed?

Also, which method did you use to create this theme? The first link or the second link (see your second previous post) or some other method?

In any case, this is much better than what I was able to achieve on my own. Thank you.
I haven't used Universal Theme Patcher nor UxStyle Core Beta yet but they both seem to be for using already created themes. Can I not use these applications to make my custom themes from scratch or modify existing themes?

Rookie2 said:

I haven't used Universal Theme Patcher nor UxStyle Core Beta yet but they both seem to be for using already created themes. Can I not use these applications to make my custom themes from scratch or modify existing themes?

Click to expand...

You need to do 1 of them so the theme will work right, that's why it's retro grey now. They are used just to be able to use custom themes.

I use https://www.vistastylebuilder.com/windows7.html to edit the .msstyles.

Jerry

Still too big

I installed universal theme patcher and some things got partly better but some of the problems I saw before installing UTP still persist. I'll attach a screenshot of Folder Options and another one of Paint Save Dialog.

Notice that in folder options some lines don't fit horizontally including the "Restore defaults" button
And in Paint save dialog the name box in front of "File name" can't bee seen completely.

It's a bummer that the app you used to make this theme isn't free. Isn't there any alternative? if not, would you mind making the same theme with font size 14? also, can I modify the Segoe UI 16 theme you sent? as in disabling aero, disabling event sounds, etc and then re-saving it as Segoe UI 16?

Rookie2 said:

It's a bummer that the app you used to make this theme isn't free. Isn't there any alternative? if not, would you mind making the same theme with font size 14? also, can I modify the Segoe UI 16 theme you sent? as in disabling aero, disabling event sounds, etc and then re-saving it as Segoe UI 16?

Click to expand...

Sure I will make 1 with size 14.

Yes you modify Segoe UI 16, then save it in Personalization.

Will post the theme later today.

Jerry

Give both of these a try, 1 is Segoe UI 14 and 1 is Segoe UI Semibold 12, 12 looks very good.

Jerry

Not perfect but better regarding the way it fits. You're right, the semibold text looks so nice! It's the way text should look like on windows by default instead of thin, tiny text. Thank you

Edit: I used a combination of the Semibold theme and a DPI setting of 115% and almost everything looks perfect now. I really feel so lucky I was able to get windows looking this way! It looks so nice it's almost comparable to using gdipp-like software. I will upload a before/after picture later...

...here is the comparison screenshots: