I can see where it's possible to change editor fonts, but the project panel font seems unreasonably large. Overriding the default fonts only changes the upper path bar and some other elements.
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This would be really handy when editing resource files that contain non-latin characters, such as Thai script, which is very hard to see at its default font size in Intellij 10.x. – devdanke Feb 25 '12 at 18:16
9 Answers
This worked for me in IntelliJ 14.0.3 Community Edition in Ubuntu:
File | Settings | Appearance & Behavior | Appearance
And then tick on:
[ ] Override default fonts by (not recommended)
Name: Ubuntu Size: 14
There you can choose the font and the size of everything: menus, Project panel, Editor, etc... For me, on Linux, it is fine to set it to 15 (default is 14), and then adjust the Editor font alone under:
Editor | General
Mouse
[ ] Change font size (Zoom) with Ctrl+Mouse Wheel

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3Nice job on simple text for illustrating where to navigate in prefs UI . In Android Studio on Mac it's Preferences -> Appearance – Gene Bo Apr 21 '15 at 17:44
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9This has no effect on the Project Panel, which is what OP asked for. This only changes a few other UI fonts. (Pycharm 2017.2.3, Ubuntu 14.04) – muad-dweeb Oct 27 '17 at 21:42
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2On MacOS IntelliJ 2020.1.2, the setting is called "Use custom font". The "not recommended" tag seems to be gone now. It does affect the project panel. – waternova Jun 25 '20 at 15:43
UPDATE-2016: it is possible, see this
It's not possible, unfortunately, please watch/vote for the bug.
UPDATE: In the later versions global font/size setting under Settings
(Preferences
) | Appearance
also controls the project view tool window font, but there is still no way to control the project view font individually, without changing the font/size of the other UI elements.

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7Listed bug has been listed as a duplicate. Vote for this one instead: http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/IDEA-69802 – Eric Wendelin Oct 02 '12 at 20:52
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2This is no longer true for current versions of IntelliJ. See correct answer from @mindreader. – Frank Harper Jul 22 '14 at 00:58
This can done from File | Settings | Appearance. Modify Name & Size fields under the heading Font as per need.
You might need to restart the IDE for this to take effect.

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This option no longer exists under Community 2019.3.3. What did work, however, was [this SO answer](https://stackoverflow.com/a/60371697/1824182): put the IDE into Internal Mode, then change `Tree.rowHeight` to be whatever number you want. Changing the value updates the Project tree list live, so it's easy to experiment. – Ti Strga Mar 25 '20 at 17:34
I recently had the problem as well; suddenly the font in the project panel was larger than the others. However, I found a hidden option in the settings of IntelliJ which disables this odd behavior:
- Open the file
~\.IdeaIC2018.1\config\options\ide.general.xml
- Set the entry with key
bigger.font.in.project.view
tofalse
This is what the file now looks like for me:
<application>
<component name="GeneralSettings">
<option name="confirmExit" value="false" />
<option name="processCloseConfirmation" value="TERMINATE" />
<option name="searchInBackground" value="true" />
</component>
<component name="Registry">
<entry key="ide.tooltip.initialDelay" value="604" />
<entry key="tabs.alphabetical" value="true" />
<entry key="SBT.system.in.process" value="true" />
<entry key="bigger.font.in.project.view" value="false" />
</component>
</application>
I did not found this option in the GUI though.

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The location for me was ~/Library/Preferences/IntelliJIdea2018.1/options/ide.general.xml – ptimson Jun 09 '18 at 11:41
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Looked promising but didn't work for me on Manjaro with proprietary video card driver. Location for android devs BTW is: .AndroidStudio?.?/config/options/ide.general.xml – user3259330 Dec 14 '18 at 17:19
Save Default scheme with a new scheme name then it will allow you to change font.

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3That's the (non-obvious) key; you need to duplicate the Scheme using "Save As…", then change the font size, then restart the app (of course :) – avocade Jan 22 '15 at 20:48
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@avocade "Which 'Scheme'?" i asked. "Editor > Colors & Fonts" i found. – Nick Humphrey Jan 06 '17 at 11:48
I know super late, but you can use the following shortcuts on your keyboard
ctrl + shift + '<'
to make font smaller
ctrl + shift + '>'
to make font larger

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The fix for me was to switch the Theme from GTK+ to IntelliJ, I confirm that Darcula works as well. The fonts broke for me following a switch to proprietary NVIDIA video drivers. On Manjaro Linux running Android Studio.

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Increase the resolution of your monitor in your computer's video card settings. Everything will get smaller. Then you can increase the size of your font in the editor to compensate. Of course, that might make other programs control features seem too small, but if you're saying it is too big, you're probably are using a low resolution (below 1268x1024). Then again maybe you have awesome vision and everything looks big to you because you can see small things really well.

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