Sublime Forum

**zBernie** · February 7, 2017, 3:10am

I’m a long time vim user and Sublime noob. Can someone tell me how to increase the size of the fonts of the tabs, and also the open files sidebar?

I’m using the the spacegray theme if that matters.

-Thanks

**math2001** · February 7, 2017, 3:58am

Good guess, you have to tweak the theme. Have a look here to know how to do it.

**rppn** · February 7, 2017, 6:26am

@zBernie the Readme page on Github has some options listed. See https://github.com/kkga/spacegray/blob/master/README.md

@math2001 your answer is not related to the Spacegray options. Why are you linking the Soda theme page?

**math2001** · February 7, 2017, 7:42am

Have you read it? It explains how to tweak a theme without duplicating it. It takes the Soda theme for the examples, that’s all.

But, it might be not very clear, you’re right

@zBernie: Learn how to tweak themes on Sublime Text with the link I just gave you, then open Spacegay.sublime-theme and look for font.size. From here, you’ll know what to tweak to make the font bigger in the side bar, tabs.

**zBernie** · February 8, 2017, 3:19am

I read this and created a Spacegray.sublime-theme file with the settings below. However, changing those settings has no effect on the tabs. I took the settings right from the GitHub Spacegray theme page. Any idea where I’m going wrong?

[
// Tabs

{
    "class": "tabset_control",
    "settings": ["spacegray_tabs_large"],
    "tab_height": 34
},

{
    "class": "tab_label",
    "settings": ["spacegray_tabs_font_large"],
    "font.size": 12.0
}

]

**zBernie** · February 8, 2017, 3:38am

Thank you that was exactly what I was looking for. I missed settings at the bottom of the page previously. Now if you could be so kind as to answer a question about my settings file below;
How would I group the 4 Spacegray theme settings together? I tried surrounding them in curly braces, and tried various permutations, but always get a syntax error.

Essentially I want to group these theme options together:

“theme”: “Spacegray.sublime-theme”,
“color_scheme”: “Packages/Theme - Spacegray/base16-ocean.dark.tmTheme”,
“spacegray_tabs_font_xlarge”: true,
“spacegray_sidebar_font_xlarge”: true,

-Thanks

{
“ignored_packages”:
[
“Vintage”
],

"open_files_in_new_window": false,
"translate_tabs_to_spaces": true,
// Spacegray config options here: https://github.com/kkga/spacegray/blob/master/README.md
"theme": "Spacegray.sublime-theme",
"color_scheme": "Packages/Theme - Spacegray/base16-ocean.dark.tmTheme",
"spacegray_tabs_font_xlarge": true,
"spacegray_sidebar_font_xlarge": true,
"font_size": 13,
"auto_complete_selector": "text.html.markdown, text.plain, meta.tag - punctuation.definition.tag.begin, source - comment - string.quoted.double.block - string.quoted.single.block - string.unquoted.heredoc",

}

**OdatNurd** · February 8, 2017, 4:08am

[quote=“zBernie, post:6, topic:25945”]
How would I group the 4 Spacegray theme settings together? I tried surrounding them in curly braces, and tried various permutations, but always get a syntax error.

Essentially I want to group these theme options together[/quote]

The only way to do that is to make them visually distinct by surrounding them with blank lines above and below or using a comment separator line. For example:

{
    "ignored_packages":
    [
        "Vintage"
    ],

    //-----------------------------------------------------
    // Theme Settings
    //-----------------------------------------------------
    "theme": "Spacegray.sublime-theme",
    "color_scheme": "Packages/Theme - Spacegray/base16-ocean.dark.tmTheme",
    "spacegray_tabs_font_xlarge": true,
    "spacegray_sidebar_font_xlarge": true,
    //-----------------------------------------------------

    "open_files_in_new_window": false,
}

Although sublime-settings files are JSON, and thus it’s technically possible to provide a sub object as a key (like ignored_packages only with braces instead of square brackets), Sublime requires its settings to be top-level and won’t respond to them if they’re stored in a sub object. Theoretically you could modify the code in the theme to allow its settings to be stored that way if you wanted to, though.

**zBernie** · February 8, 2017, 4:10am

Thanks, I thought it was me with syntaxitis.

**math2001** · February 8, 2017, 4:24am

Oh… shame on me, haven’t thought about looking the options in the readme… A cool package to help you to not do the same mistake. (everyone should have it install IMO)

**EventHorizon** · February 8, 2017, 6:40pm

to change font size … just hold down
control key and tap either + or - key

       ctrl +   or     ctrl -

this is same as changing font size in any modern browser

**mark.stewart** · February 9, 2017, 2:22am

Though not all developers use the same Sublime vocabulary, and even Sublime is a bit eccentrically foggy, try to sort out your coloring effort this way. I do this reality check routinely when Sublime behaves awash as you sound. First, an orientation not yet attempted on this page…

Themes adjusts the colors and fonts for the entire Sublime window. Schemes (with filename extension tmTheme, yeah hinky all right) only adjust working pane colors for code hinting. Properly written themes and schemes should work together, flip-flop between different ones. Themes will present with more flip-flop fails than schemes (unless you base and backup python cores for a living).

If you want to see how themes and schemes work together, you can play around with a popular pairing, such as “Theme - Soda SolarizedDark” from elecrticgraffitti, and Sublime built in scheme “Solarized Dark.tmTheme” by wbond. Those two are stable enough that their fail is certainly diagnostic for problems elsewhere in Sublime. Mind you, native Sublime is not for everyone [sic].

You will find poplar pairings most stable, or rather consistent. There are some things you can do with pairings. There are some things that you should not do with pairings. On thing you can always do is study Settings, to work out what configures appearances for tabs and other features. You should also view and edit package files for the same reason. If you compare any pairing using it in ST2 and ST3, you will find that the stable release is more stable than the beta, obviously.

Setting tabs appearance automatically (themes and schemes) or manually (good old code), up to you. Font size in tabs adjustment, that’s a theme behavior. Unless you want to play around copying Sublime Settings Default into Sublime Settings User, for a personal edit.

One final caution! Wack a pairing, get ready to reinstall Sublime. Being more complex, themes will give you a better wack for the buck. Maul your code, manual too often? Package Control can be a hidden blessing, if you are wondering why I give so much space to themes scheming. Hope you find something in there helpful.

How to increase font size in tabs?