How to change the default font size of XTerm?

Question

XTerm font is very small. How can I set it larger?

score 139 · Accepted Answer · edited Aug 12 '22 at 09:37

If you don't already have one, create a file in your home directory named .Xresources to store your preferences for various X programs. Append a line to the file such as

xterm*font:     *-fixed-*-*-*-18-*

This informs xterm to use the 'fixed' font at size 18. From here, to incorporate the changes you've made you can either:

restart X; or
run xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources in a terminal

All new xterms should now have the font change.

If you run man xterm and go down to the RESOURCES section, you can find a wealth of additional, configurable xterm options.

score 98 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 15 '14 at 14:17

98

Use -fa and -fs parameters:

xterm -fa 'Monospace' -fs 14

answered Aug 15 '14 at 14:17

nvd

1,250

score 77 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 27 '19 at 22:09

77

You can add the following as an example to your ~/.Xresources file:

! Use a truetype font and size.
xterm*faceName: Monospace
xterm*faceSize: 14

Then run the following:

xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources

answered Apr 27 '19 at 22:09

nazmul idris

871

score 52 · Answer 4 · answered Nov 05 '13 at 14:24

52

You can also Ctrl-Right mouse click for temporary change of font size

answered Nov 05 '13 at 14:24

Ev Dolzhenko

4,749

score 15 · Answer 5 · edited Feb 08 '16 at 15:52

From messing with /etc/X11/app-defaults/XTerm file and man page for Xterm I found two methods.

Method 1: A simpler method but not permanent: hold Ctrl key and right click button. This should bring up a menu for VT fonts, which stays on only as long as you hold right click key. You should see 7 choices, the largest being huge, which is what I'm using because my vision isn't exactly good.

Source: xterm(1) man page, part VT Fonts, which states "The fontMenu pops up when when the “control” key and pointer button three are pressed in a window."

Method 2: Permanent. Look through /etc/X11/app-defaults/XTerm, find what sizes lines such as *VT100.font1: , choose one, and write somewhere xterm*font: 10x20 (10x20 , again this is my choice for reasons I already stated).

About my system: I'm running Ubuntu 13.10

score 10 · Answer 6 · answered Sep 29 '17 at 18:08

One more option, add this to your ~/.Xresources to make hotkeys for changing the font size:

XTerm.vt100.translations: #override \n\
  Ctrl <Key> minus: smaller-vt-font() \n\
  Ctrl <Key> plus: larger-vt-font()

If you use uxterm, be sure to use UXTerm.vt100.translations instead.

Then you can use ctrl++ to increase font size or ctrl+- to decrease the size, just like you can with ctrl+right-click and selecting one of the other font size options.

score 4 · Answer 7 · edited Mar 23 '13 at 23:42

4

you can also simply test them with :

xterm -fn "--clean--*---*---*---*-*"

after sel with xfontsel

edited Mar 23 '13 at 23:42

Frederik Spang

1,092

answered Mar 23 '13 at 22:34

pat

41

score 4 · Answer 8 · edited Jan 12 '18 at 23:10

4

Creating the .Xresources file with specified lines of code (provided in the answer by noffle) fixed my issue, but on reboot the settings got lost again.

If the settings specified in the .Xresource file are not getting reflected automatically, try adding the below line to ~/.bashrc.

[[ -f ~/.Xresources ]] && xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources

edited Jan 12 '18 at 23:10

Zanna

72,312

answered Jan 12 '18 at 22:26

Jerin

141

score 0 · Answer 9 · answered Sep 16 '24 at 07:59

In my environment: Linux debian trixi, xorg, JWM; I put into /etc/jwm/system.jwmrc the next menu line:

<Program label="Terminal">urxvt -fn &quot;xft:Bitsrteam Vera Sans Mono:pixelsize=18&quot; -e sh -c &quot;/bin/bash --login&quot;</Program>

Sorry I cannot explain what each option means, while I composed this line starting with an example from man urxvt and tuning the values.

I would be glad if it will be helpful to anyone.

How to change the default font size of XTerm?

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