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How to Make Text Bigger in Obsidian

Lee Stanton September 8, 2023

Obsidian is a creative haven where ideas blossom and turn into reality. But sometimes, gazing at the text can get tricky if things are too small.

There’s no need to be discouraged, though. This guide will show you how to get your fonts looking just right so you don’t miss out on any of the details.

Tackling the Problem Directly With Increased Font Size

First things first, let’s address the elephant in the room: how do you make text bigger in Obsidian? The most straightforward way is to increase the font size. Here’s how it’s done:

Click the gear icon to open the “Settings” menu. You’ll usually find the gear in the bottom-left corner.
Within the “Settings” menu, find “Appearance.” Here, you’ll find many options related to Obsidian’s visual presentation.
Within the “Font” section, you can tweak the Interface Font, Text Font, and other font-related settings. Use the slider to find the sweet spot that’s to your liking, and your text will now be larger and clearer.

For a temporary change, you can also use Ctrl and the + sign on your keyboard or the Ctrl key and scroll wheel on your mouse. Increased font size usually scales well with your UI (unless you go overboard) and is a much more practical solution than decreasing screen resolution.

Doing It the Stylish Way with Custom CSS

For those who like to get a bit more creative and customize to their heart’s content, Obsidian gives you the tools to modify its appearance in more detail using CSS.

Find the obsidian.css files, where you can do all the fancy adjustments. You can change everything from font size to color schemes by adjusting settings here.
If you want to individually change the size of H1, H2, or H3 headers, look for classes like “.cm-header-1, .cm-header-2″, etc. Adjusting these will alter the size and look of your headers in the edit screen.

If you wish to follow your changes in the preview mode as you tweak them, you can use Live Preview. Live Preview gives you a much better editing experience. You don’t need to constantly switch between Edit and Preview mode. With Live Preview, you can see exactly how your Markdown note will eventually look.

Here’s how you enable Live Preview in the current vault:

Click on the “Settings” menu.
Find and click Editor from the sidebar.
Disable the “Legacy Editor” within “General“ settings.
Click “Relaunch” for your change to take effect.
Let Obsidian relaunch and then navigate to Settings once more.
Click “Editor” from the sidebar one more time.
Change the Default editing mode to “Live Preview.”

When you open a new window, Live Preview will be the default setting. If you previously opened some tabs, they’ll stay in Source mode.

Community Plugins

The Obsidian community has been constantly buzzing with activity and development. New plugins adding convenient features for any type of user seem to come out every other day. Some of these plugins let you customize the text to your heart’s content.

Obsidian Underline – While it doesn’t directly deal with size, this plugin lets you underline text to increase readability by emphasizing what’s important.
Advanced Tables – If you want to adjust the text size within tables, this plugin can make dealing with them much easier. It adds many nifty features to tables, including text adjustments.

Make Text Pop Beyond Size

Now that you’ve tackled size and made your text readable, let’s talk style. Making your text bigger is great for accessibility, but there’s much more you can do with it to make it more personal.

Here are some other ways to make your text stand out:

Use ** on both sides of the text you want to emphasize to make it bold and * to make it italic. These are simple but effective ways to emphasize text.
If you want to draw attention to a specific piece of text, use == on both ends to highlight it.
Indicate quotes or emphasize specific text with block quotes by using > at the start of your text to create the block quote.

Make Obsidian Prettier With Themes

Obsidian isn’t just about text anymore; it offers a whole new experience in vault design. Themes let you take your notes from commonplace to extraordinary, turning them into something beautiful that makes you proud of your work.

The Obsidian community has designed dozens of unique themes to transform your vault visually. Plus, these dedicated users keep making new themes. You can opt for a dark and mysterious ambiance, something bright and airy, or anything in between. Take your time to browse and discover what works best for you.

If you’re feeling adventurous, you can also dive into the CSS of these themes and tweak them to your liking. Change colors, adjust padding, or even add animations if that suits your fancy.

See the Bigger Picture Through the Graph View

One of Obsidian’s standout features is its graph view, which visually represents the connections between your notes and lets you explore them more conveniently. While this isn’t about text size, it’s about seeing the bigger picture — literally.

The graph view allows you to spot the connections between your notes, making it easier to recognize any patterns or holes in your understanding.

You have the power to customize your graph however you want, from changing up the colors of the nodes to tinkering with the style of the edges. A personalized graph view is excellent for readability and ease of navigation.

The Power of Linking

Obsidian lets you connect ideas without breaking stride. It’s not about the font size, but it does make it easy to read what you’ve written. That helps keep your thoughts moving and makes sure nothing gets lost in translation.

For internal links, use [[Page Link]], where you replace “Page Link” with an actual link to your page, to create links to other pages within your Obsidian vault.

For external links, point to any resources you’d like using [Text](URL). Replace “Text” with your anchor text and “URL” to the web page you wish to access with the anchor text. That will create a clickable hyperlink.

Readability Made Easy

Now you know everything you need to make your text pop in Obsidian. But size isn’t everything – it’s the style and content of your words that stick in your mind when you need to focus and remember. So don’t settle only for big fonts. Be sure to enrich the substance, too.

Have you made the text bigger in Obsidian? Do you have other tips and tricks to make Obsidian look its best or be more accessible? Share your thoughts and ideas with us in the comments below.