Email, Messaging, & Video Calls > Email How to Change the Default Font in the Mac's Mail Program Choose your favorite font and size for emails By Heinz Tschabitscher Heinz Tschabitscher Writer University of Vienna A former freelance contributor who has reviewed hundreds of email programs and services since 1997. lifewire's editorial guidelines Updated on October 22, 2021 Reviewed by Ryan Perian Reviewed by Ryan Perian Western Governors University Ryan Perian is a certified IT specialist who holds numerous IT certifications and has 12+ years' experience working in the IT industry support and management positions. lifewire's editorial guidelines Email Yahoo! Mail Gmail Trending Videos Close this video player What to Know To change the default font go to Mail > Preferences > Fonts & Colors > Message font and make a selection.To change the font in a single message, highlight the text and select options on the formatting bar. This article explains how to choose a default font for both reading plain text and composing emails, and choose a default size in Apple's Mail application on Macs running macOS 10.15 Catalina through macOS Sierra (10.12). Change the Default Mac Mail Font To specify a default font face and size for composing and reading mail in the Mac macOS Mail application: Launch the Mail application and select Mail > Preferences from the menu bar. Select the Fonts & Colors tab in the preferences screen. Next to Message font, click Select. In the Fonts screen that opens, select the desired font in the Family column. Choose a variant in the Typeface column and pick a font size in the Size column. Close the Fonts window. Click the Composing tab in the preferences screen. In the Composing section, confirm that Rich Text is selected next to Message Format. Select it if it is not chosen. Optionally, in the Responding section, check Use the same message format as the original message. When people send you plain text messages, your replies are in plain text as well. Your default font is not used. Force Mail to always use rich-text formatting on the Composing tab by unchecking Use the same message format as the original message. Close the preferences window. Changing a Mail Font on the Fly Even if you establish a default font you want to use when composing emails, occasions may arise when you prefer using a different font for all or part of the email. Type the email text and then highlight the part of the text you want to change. Format the selected text by selecting a font, size, color, or other attributes from the formatting bar at the top of the screen. Formatting changes are only available for the email message body, not for the To, From, and other header fields. What Makes a Good Font for Email? A good font for email is one that renders texts that are legible on any screen—a large monitor, tablet, phone, or watch. Typical font families that accomplish this are sans-serif fonts with little ambiguity between characters and ample height for small characters (x-height). Classics Verdana, Helvetica, and Arial are fonts that encompass these features and are almost universally available. Choose the size that makes your text big enough to be easily legible. Fonts between 11 and 13 points in size are typically suitable sizes for email. How the font displays on the recipient's display depends on the recipient's screen makeup and resolution. If they have size problems, they can enlarge the email type on a case-by-case basis or use assistive technology to increase the font's display size permanently if necessary. Was this page helpful? Thanks for letting us know! Get the Latest Tech News Delivered Every Day Subscribe Tell us why! Other Not enough details Hard to understand Submit