A year after its release on Windows, Google Chrome for Mac OS X and Linux finally see a public beta release. The OS X builds have one rough edge, though: it lacks an option in the UI for specifying a preferred font and preferred font-size. On all OS, Chrome also lacks an option to specify a minimum font-size, something absolutely vital for my aging eyes.
Luckily, a work around for the minimum font-size issue (an open bug) is documented. On OS X, the file to edit is ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Preferences
, on Linux the patch is: ~/.config/google-chrome/Default/Preferences
. Replace ‘google-chrome’ or ‘Google/Chrome’ with ‘chromium’ if you prefer the nightly builds. OS X users can also specify a preferred font (and font-size) in the same file. That work-around is of course quite user unfriendly… Here is hoping that the Chrome team will put some more resources into this.
Here is what I have specified on my side, matching my settings in my default browser, Camino and Safari.
"webkit": {
"webprefs": {
"default_fixed_font_size": 13,
"default_font_size": 16,
"fixed_font_family": "Menlo",
"minimum_font_size": 12,
"minimum_logical_font_size": 12,
"sansserif_font_family": "Helvetica Neue",
"serif_font_family": "Times",
"standard_font_is_serif": false
}
}
Search for "webkit"
in the file, if it doesn’t exist, add the block near the end of the file. The file uses xml-like syntax, and is thus very sensitive to errors. I’ve uploaded a sample file. Needless to say, quit Chrome before editing that file, and make a back up before proceeding.