10 Ways To Make Text Larger On Web Pages

If text on a web page looks too small for you, you have many different options to make the text larger and the page easier to read.
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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how you can make small text on webpages easier to read. 
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Now different websites use different fonts and text sizes to display information. Sometimes you end up at a website where the text might be too small for you to read. There are many different ways to handle this. So for instance here's a webpage with a lot of text on it. Chances are you are probably at a news site or something else. Wikipedia usually has text at a decent size. But let's say this text is too small to read. How can you make it larger? 
Well, the easiest way to do so is just to use the browser's zoom function. I'm going to start here showing all these examples in Safari. Later on I will talk about Chrome as well. So if you go to the View Menu in Safari you'll see Zoom In and Zoom Out. You can use these to increase the size of all the content at the page. So you can see how the text got larger. Most of the time images will get larger as well. You can use Zoom In and Zoom Out and note the keyboard shortcuts, Command + and Command -. So I can use Command + several times to make the text larger and larger. I can use Command - to make it smaller, to get the size just right. Notice also there is an actual Size Menu item there and that is Command 0. So if I use that it brings everything back to 100%, the default size for that webpage. 
Now note you can set this on a per site level. So if you always find the text too small on one webpage or another you can increase the size and then notice that if you go to Safari Settings and then go to Websites you'll see here ways to customize individual webpages. One of those options here is Page Zoom. If I select that you'll see any pages here where you've customized things. So you can see here for Wikipedia it's set to 125% because I changed it. That means it will remember my setting. If I'd rather have the default set to something else I can choose it right here. I can also choose a default. So every webpage I go to, if it is not in this list set to something else, will default to this. 
Now sometimes you'd want the text to be larger but not the images and other graphic elements of the page. So we can do that by going to the View Menu and there's a hidden set of menu options here. You can only see them if you hold down the Option Key. So look down where it says Zoom In and Zoom Out and notice if I hold the Option Key down it changes to Make Text Bigger and Make Text Smaller with the keyboard shortcut Option Command + and Option Command -. So if I use those you'll see it zooms in just the text and leaves the rest the same size. You can still use Command zero to bring everything back to 100%. 
You can also Zoom In on the entire page. It is easy to do this if you've got a trackpad. If you have a trackpad just use two fingers and pinch out to Zoom In. So let's go Zoom In by pinching out and then you can pinch in with two fingers to Zoom back in. If you're having trouble just reading one little section you can zoom in on that and easily zoom back out. Now you can find the settings for this in System Settings. If you go to Trackpad you'll see under Scroll & Zoom, that Zoom In and Out. So  if it's not working for you maybe because you've got this turned Off. 
The next option works not only on Apple's Trackpads but also if you have an Apple Mouse. You can find it here in System Settings in the same place. If you look under Scroll & Zoom you'll see Smart Zoom. If you've got that On you can double tap with two fingers on the trackpad. So you get over the section that you want, like this paragraph here, and I'm going to use two fingers and double tap. You can see how it zooms in slightly. So try to Zoom in on the element that your pointer is over. Then another double tap with two fingers zoom back out. 
You have the same option, if you go in System Settings, to Mouse and then Point & Click. You'll see Smart Zoom there as well. So you can turn that On and then this is a double tap with one finger, like that. So now you can hover over a section, like this paragraph here,  and double tap with one finger like this. You can see it zooms in. Do it again and it zooms back out. 
Now there's also a Safari setting that will make sure that any website that you go to where the text is too small, it will automatically be shown larger. So if you go to Safari and then Settings and then you want to go to Advanced you're going to see the setting here under Accessibility, Never Use Font Sizes Smaller Than. Turn that On and set it to something, like say 18. You can see how the text will be at least that big. If you set it to something small, like this, then changes are that's smaller than what the page is already displaying. So it will look normal.
Of course there's also Reader View. Reader View is the special mode in Safari that will get rid of everything except the article that's on the page. Of course a lot of this depends on how the page is designed. Safari has to kind of figure out where the article is and get rid of the other elements and display it in kind of an e-book format. So you can get to that by going to View and then Show Reader or Shift Command R. Then it looks like this. Then you can scroll through it and just read the text of the article. It won't work with all webpages because sometimes it can't detect what the article is or there isn't an article on the page. But it is a great way to read news articles and blog posts. Once you're in this mode you can click here in the Address Bar and you can increase the font size, decrease it, change the background color, and select from several very readable fonts. Like with Zoom you can also set Reader View for websites. So if I go to Safari Settings and I go to the websites here I've got Reader here as one of the options on the left. So, I can have Reader View automatically turn On every time I'm at this website. 
Now you can get into a little trouble with this. Sometimes if you set a site to always go to Reader View you'll miss all of the navigation elements here. So, for instance, you may not see things like a way to login or navigate around the site. Every once in a while I have to help somebody that can't log into a website or do something they want to do on a website and it takes a little while for me to realize that the reason is that they are in Reader View, not viewing the webpage normally. So for that reason I like to sometimes use Reader View to read an article, but as soon as I'm done reading it I exit Reader View right away to get back to the normal view of the website. So the next time I'm at the site it starts this way. 
Now you also have the ability, in Settings, under Advanced, to set a Style Sheet. So just about every webpage you go to has one or more style sheets. This defines how things like Fonts are shown on the page. You can actually insert your own custom one to supplement what the site already shows. One of the things you can do with that is to override Font settings. So, for instance, I've got this little text file here. So this is a very simple CSS style sheet. It's just saying that for the Body text, which is the entire webpage, set the font size to 24 pixels and set it so that it overrides any other instructions from other style sheets. So I'm going to save this and then back in Safari, under Advanced settings, I'm going to select that style sheet. Note that if you make changes to it you have to kind of reselect the page again. How well it works really depends on the CSS that is already part of the webpage. So there may be things there that override your custom settings, for instance. So it is hard to predict how it will change each individual webpage. But it's a handy technique to know. 
You can also use standard accessibility functions to read text in Safari and anywhere else. So I'm going to go in System Settings here and then into Accessibility and then to Zoom. I can use the standard system zoom function. You can see here it turns on with Option Command 8 and then I can use Option Command + or - to zoom in. So, for instance, I can use Option Command 8 and there is zoom and Option Command + to get larger and smaller and I can also have other ways to display zoom. For instance, I can instead of have it being full screen, the picture-in-picture so it displays in a little box like this. I can use Option Command 8 to turn it Off again. Note that Option Command and then plus and minus, those are the same shortcuts that Safari was using. So to make text bigger and make text smaller shortcuts aren't working in Safari it may be because you've got this Accessibility function turned On. 
Now there is another option in Accessibility here under Zoom called Hover Text. If you turn this On  and you hold the Command Key down while you're over some text then it should display the text in a little box, like that. So that works for webpages as well. I can put the pointer right here and then hold the Command Key down and then it should display, you can see there, in a box the text much larger. You can click the little i button there and there are whole bunch of different controls for how this works. 
Also, I should mention that if you're having trouble reading text on a lot of webpages then you're probably having trouble reading text elsewhere as well. You may need to adjust your Display Settings to just make it easier to read things in general. So if you go into system Settings and then you go to Displays, you can of course choose one of these other options here other than the default for how text looks. If you're using a modern Mac Display, especially on a MacBook or an iMac or the Apple Studio Display or any high density display you may have bought don't let somebody tell you what is the proper one to use. If the text looks too small to you and you can't read it then it is not the proper one for you. Experiment with these and see which one works better for you. You can also Control Click here and show a list and then with this on you can show all resolutions and have tons of different options. Try not to choose any that are low resolution. But experiment with some of these other ones and find one that looks best to you regardless of what anybody else tells you you should be using. 
Now, a lot of things I showed you were specific to safari. So what if you're using the next most popular browser on the Mac, Chrome. You can find some similar things there. For instance, in Chrome, if you go to View, you've got Zoom In and Zoom Out. You can also do Command zero for actual size. But unfortunately there is no make text smaller or make text bigger here. But you can click on the three dots button here at the top corner to go into Settings for Chrome and you can find some other things here. You can go to Settings, for instance, and in Settings under Appearance you can go in here and here's where you can set a Font size to larger and also customize fonts. You can adjust those to make text a little easier to read. You also can use some of the system-wide functions like the Trackpad zoom in with two fingers and out again and the trackpad and mouse Smart Zoom, I'll just double tap with two fingers here to zoom in and double tap again to zoom out. 
There is also a Reading Mode but it is very different than Safari's. Because remember Goggle makes its money from ads. So Reader Mode isn't showing ads so it is not really good for Goggle to have that. But if you go into the Settings here and then you go to More Tools there's a Reading Mode. You do that and it brings up the text on the right. So you're still going to see all the different elements including ads on the left. But you will have this little reading mode here and you can make the text larger and smaller in this panel. Then adjust it to take up more or less space as well. 
So as you can see if you have trouble reading text on a webpage you have many different options for making text larger. I hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.
10 Ways To Make Text Larger On Web Pages

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