Change the terminal font size

Change the font used in the terminal.

This tutorial assumes the usage of the default Regolith look cahuella. If you've updated to something else, substitute that look's name for cahuella below.

You may prefer a different font size in the terminal than what's set by default. This tutorial requires us to make a single change to the Xresource file that defines the font used in st-term, the default terminal used by Regolith.

  1. Stage your own Xresource file (tutorial), then open ~/.Xresources-regolith in your editor of choice.
  2. The file should contain a single line which is an #include to another Xresource file. Let's copy the contents of that referenced file into our Xresource file rather than having the include. To do this, exit out of the editor and run cp /etc/regolith/styles/cahuella/root ~/.Xresources-regolith
  3. Ok, now back in editing the file, it should look something like this:
! -- Styles - Colors
#include "/etc/regolith/styles/cahuella/color"

! -- Styles - Fonts
#include "/etc/regolith/styles/cahuella/typeface"

! -- Styles - Theme
#include "/etc/regolith/styles/cahuella/theme"

! -- Applications
! These files map values defined above into specific app settings.
#include "/etc/regolith/styles/st-term"
#include "/etc/regolith/styles/i3-wm"
#include "/etc/regolith/styles/i3xrocks"
#include "/etc/regolith/styles/rofi"
#include "/etc/regolith/styles/gnome"
  1. The setting we need to change is set in /etc/regolith/styles/cahuella/typeface. Let's create our own copy of that and reference it from our Xresource file. You'll need to specify the path to the file explicitly, and cannot use $HOME or ~/ as a shortcut. First, update the line in your open editor to point to a file we haven't created yet:
#include "/etc/regolith/styles/cahuella/typeface"

…should be changed to:

#include "/home/[YOUR USER NAME]/.Xresources-typeface"
  1. Now lets create that file:
$ cp /etc/regolith/styles/cahuella/typeface ~/.Xresources-typeface
  1. Finally, we can edit the file to change the font specification. Load ~/.Xresources-typeface into a text editor, and change:
#define typeface_terminal   Source Code Pro:pixelsize=16:antialias=true:autohint=true

…to your preferred font specification, or this for testing:

#define typeface_terminal   Source Code Pro:pixelsize=24:antialias=true:autohint=true

Verification

After saving the file, you can run regolith-look refresh or xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources-regolith for the changes to take effect. If you launch a new terminal, your updated font specification should be in effect. You can verify that the setting was changed by checking the value on the command line:

$ xrescat St.font

Last modified February 12, 2020: Fix overwritten howto. (1ab6dfd)