No more giant keys: Gboard now has its own font size setting

In recent months, Google has made several improvements to Gboard, including giving its Settings menu a much-needed spring cleaning and better autofill integration. Now, the company is rolling out another change to Gboard, making its font size independent of your phone’s settings.

Until now, Gboard’s font size was linked to your phone’s system font. Any change you made to the device font size automatically applied to Gboard as well. This sounds good in theory, but it falls apart if you prefer unusually small or large font sizes.

Now, Google is rolling out an independent font size setting for its Android keyboard. When the feature makes its way to your account, you should see a “Keyboard font size updated” tip the next time you invoke the keyboard. You can tap the settings icon from the banner or head into Gboard settings > Preferences > Font size.

From here, you can use a slider to adjust Gboard’s font size independently. By default, it matches the system size, but you can increase it in 15% increments starting at 85%. Beyond 130%, the slider jumps to 150%, 180%, and 200%.

The changes are limited to Gboard’s keys, toolbar, and its header at the top. They don’t extend to emoji. It may seem like a small tweak, but it helps fix the awkward layout issues many Android users run into when using larger-than-usual font sizes.

One oversight in Google’s implementation: it does not show a preview. You can only adjust the keyboard font size — there’s no way to tell how big or small they become after that until you invoke Gboard. This could mean adjusting the font size settings multiple times until you find the right size.

Gboard’s new font size setting is not widely available yet

I’m seeing Gboard’s new font size setting on v15.9.0.799068799-beta. However, the feature appears to be tied to a server-side rollout, as it’s not showing up on all my Android devices.

Google was also previously spotted working on letting you change Gboard’s stock font. More than a year later, that feature still isn’t widely available. Hopefully, the font size setting won’t meet the same fate and will see a wider rollout.