How to change Apple Mail's font, colors and text size
Updated October 2026
To change Apple Mail's fonts, choose Mail › Settings and click Fonts & Colors. To make text bigger, press Command-Plus while you read, or give Mail its own size in System Settings › Accessibility › Display › Text size. Apple Mail has no themes, so the colors of its sidebar, message list and background follow macOS.
Change the fonts
- In Mail, choose Mail › Settings, then click Fonts & Colors.
- Next to Message list font, click Select and pick a font and size for the list of messages.
- Next to Message font, click Select and pick a font and size for reading and writing messages.
- For plain-text email, turn on “Use fixed-width font for plain text messages” and pick the fixed-width font.
Two things to know. The message font is also the font you write in. Mail usually keeps it to your Mac, but some people say their bigger text reached the people they wrote to, so see which settings change the mail you send. And when a sender picked their own font, Mail shows theirs instead of yours.
Make the text bigger
- While you read: press Command-Plus to make a message's text bigger and Command-Minus to make it smaller.
- For Mail only: on macOS 14 Sonoma and later, open System Settings › Accessibility › Display › Text size and pick a size next to Mail. Other apps keep theirs.
- Sidebar icons: System Settings › Appearance › Sidebar icon size.
- More messages on screen: in Mail › Settings › Viewing, set List Preview to fewer lines, or none.
Change colors and dark mode
- Quoted text: in Fonts & Colors, turn on Color quoted text and pick a color for each level of quoting.
- Dark mode: Mail follows the appearance you choose in System Settings › Appearance. With Dark on, “Use dark backgrounds for messages” in Mail › Settings › Viewing switches messages between dark and light backgrounds. For one message, choose View › Message › Show with Light Background.
- Related messages: with conversations turned off, “Highlight messages with color when not grouped” in Viewing marks messages from the same conversation in a color you pick.
That's every color Mail lets you choose. There's no setting for the color of the sidebar, the message list or the reading pane.
What Apple Mail can't change
- There are no themes, and no way to color the sidebar, the list or the reading pane.
- Your reading font is also your writing font.
- There's no setting for the spacing between rows in the list, only for how many preview lines each row shows.
If you want Mail to look your way
We make Lambda Mail, a Gmail app for Mac built around this. It starts out calm and native, and everything below is optional.
- Themes: seven to start (System, Graphite, Paper, Midnight, Forest, Rosé and Terminal), or duplicate one and make it your own.
- Every color: sidebar, message list, reading pane, message cards, compose window, text, secondary text, accent and the unread dot, set separately for light and dark.
- Font and spacing: System, Rounded, Serif or Monospaced, with Compact, Regular or Roomy rows.
- Text size: 85% to 140% for the list and the emails on your screen. The mail you send keeps its own size.
- Dark mode: choose whether HTML emails stay on white paper.
- Liquid Glass: on macOS 26 and later, let your desktop show through the sidebar.
- Sidebar: drag off the mailboxes you don't use, put the rest in your own order, and give labels your own colors.
- Sharing: export a theme as a file, and import other people's.
Lambda Mail works with Gmail and Google Workspace on macOS 14 and later, and the beta is free. iCloud and Outlook are on the roadmap.
More guides
Sources: Apple's Mail User Guide, Change Fonts & Colors settings and Change Viewing settings; Mac User Guide, Increase font size and icons.