Android has evolved over the years to offer custom font size scaling so that everyone can read the text displayed online. But in Android 7.0 Nougat, this capability has been expanded greatly: Now you can also customize the size of graphical items on-screen as well.
This sophisticated approach to making on-screen items more readable and easily recognizable is obviously a boon to those with vision problems. But this capability can benefit any user, and I strongly recommend that anyone running Android 7.0 Nougat closely examine these settings and pick the display and font scaling that works best for them.
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The ability to change the font size debuted in Android 6.0 Marshmallow: Navigate to Settings, Display, Font Size and you’ll see that there are four available choices: Small, Normal (the default), Large, and Extra Large.
Here’s how Display settings looks with the Normal font size: Pretty much as you’d expect.
But if you bump the font size up to Extra Large, the text is considerably bigger.
This setting continues forward in Android 7.0 Nougat, though you now get a nice preview of the various font sizes as you change them, making it easier to pick a size.
But there’s also a new setting in Display settings called Display size. And this one lets you customize the size of non-textual on-screen elements.
As with Font size, the new Display size setting offers a preview so you can see how your change will impact things. As you bump up the size to Large, Larger, or Largest (or down to Small, for those with excellent vision), the changes are quite obvious.
Even with the preview, you will want to visit the Android home screen and various apps to see what you’ve done.
As an example, here’s my normal Nexus 6P home screen, with both Font size and Display size set at their default values.
But here it is with Font size set to Large and Display size set to Larger. Not only are the items bigger, but because of the size changes, some items can no longer fit on-screen. So the layout has changed as well.
And here’s the Messenger app with the same settings.
Ultimately, how you configure these settings will be based on need—you may literally need on-screen items to be bigger to see them properly—and/or personal preference. But the first step is even knowing that you can configure these features.
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