I have the flatpak version 1.8.19 installed with the KDE desktop on Fedora 36. While I can change the size of the editor font in the IDE, I am unable to change the size of the incredibly tiny font being used for the menus: File, Edit, Sketch, Tools, Help, and all submenus. They are impossible to read without using a magnification application. I am not used to working with flatpaks but from what I've read they are self-contained and independent, right? So how do I increase the size of the menu fonts? Does the IDE use gtk or qt? Is there some environment variable that the IDE will respect to set the menu font size? Would applying a theme override what I have now? What is the best solution? I have tried googling and changing things for hours but so far, no joy.
Hi @yaconsult. I see there are some previous reports about this here:
I see that some fixes/workarounds were shared in the discussion threads of those issues. Perhaps one of those would work for you.
If by "theme", you mean the Arduino IDE theme (rather some sort of a Linux system theme), the answer is "no". The Arduino IDE theme system does not allow you to customize the menu text.
You might try Arduino IDE 2.x. I suspect the problem you are having is specific to Arduino IDE 1.x. The download links for the official Arduino IDE 2.x builds are listed here:
There is also a 3rd party Flatpak of Arduino IDE 2.x, but Arduino does not officially support that package.
Thank you for the links! I will spend today trying out the different solutions including 2.x of the IDE.
The only reason why I didn't initially install the latest version is that I am new to arduino and trying to get the example code for an esp32-s3 dev board I just bought with a 4.3 inch touch display working and all the code they provide specifically references the 1.8 arduino GUI. Does version 2 of the IDE require any code changes compared to version 1?
I had seen the search results for the posts you linked above but from the titles, I thought they were specifically about DPI/display resolution whereas the problem I'm having is not with resolution but with font size. But I now see that one term might be used in place of the other.
I will report back to help others using the flatpak that might have the same issue.
The only relevant difference is that Arduino IDE 2.x does not currently have support for these plugins that provide enhanced capabilities for Arduino IDE 1.x for use with ESP32:
However, all standard capabilities for writing, compiling, and uploading sketches to ESP32 boards are completely identical for both IDEs, so you will not need to make any changes to your code.
Thanks so much. That is very valuable.
OK, I struggled with this quite a bit but did not find a way around the problem when using the flatpak on Fedora. I read through all of the threads above but it didn't look to me like they were using flatpaks so the proposed solutions didn't seem to apply or didn't work. I tried a number of the gtk config options but they seemed to have no effect. I guess this is not surprising since one of the design goals of flatpaks is to isolate/sandbox their code. While I would love to know what the solution is for the Arduino flatpak, I would much rather be programming some microcontrollers!
So I searched to see what options were available to install Arduino IDE on fedora/KDE/X11 and decided to try the Appimage version linked from https://www.arduino.cc/en/software And it works just fine! The size of the menu fonts are as expected and perfectly readable. Interestingly, the Fedora wiki suggests using the flatpak version but the font issue make it unusable for me. I was prepared to build from source if necessary, but the Appimage does everything I need.
Thanks for taking the time to post an update. I'm glad the official AppImage package of Arduino IDE is working for you.
Regards,
Per
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