Registry and Winaero question about text size

One of the things that get on my nerves about current Windows is that Microsoft has decided to eliminate the control panel item that was there since Windows 3.1 that allowed you to customize many GUI items, including the text for icons, menus and other things. Winaero kind of solves this problem with a few of the items in the Advanced Appearance Settings section. The problem is that (at least in my experience) you have to change one item, click apply, and even though it gives you two choices, to log out to apply that specific parameter, or log out later, in my experience the latter doesn't work. Meaning, I have tried changing the text size on those items from 9 to 12, and each time I clicked apply, then I chose "I'll do it myself later", and it didn't work. What works is changing one, apply, log off and back in, change the next, and so on.

If this was a one time thing, I wouldn't care. But it seems that every time Microsoft pushes a new update (and sometimes on reboots without updates), the text size defaults to 9, and that annoys the hell out of me, because I'm an old guy, and even with new glasses, I hate forcing my eyes to read tiny text. Setting the text to 12 makes it more even across the whole Windows 11 GUI, which still seems like a work in progress with some new elements that look modern and have a decent text size, and parts that go back to Windows 95.

I know that there's a system-wide text size slider in the settings, but that's useless. It scales up all the text, so you have some things are a normal size and the title and menu bars become gigantic. Typical Microsoft, they can't get it right even when it's something as simple as this.

Now, I'm tired of having to open Winaero Tweaker every two weeks or so and go through the same thing over and over. If if was just one log off and on, or just one reboot, I wouldn't care. Or if it was multiple reboots, but it stayed that way forever, fine. So what I want to do is to modify one of those scripts that you save as a .bat file to change just that in the registry. I think I know the parameters that need to be changed, but also in typical Microsoft fashion, they had to make it as difficult as possible, so the entries in the registry for the text size (and font) is not something that most people can understand, but instead this:

ee ff ff ff 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 90 01 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 05 00 53 00 65 00 67 00 6f 00 65 00 20 00 55 00 49 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ..

When double clicking on the parameter, we can see this:



From that I can tell it's the Segoe UI font and nothing else. But I suppose that somewhere in there it says that the size is 9, because once I changed it to 12, it shows a slightly different string (I'll paste the size 9 first again and right below the 12 so you can all compare it easier:

ee ff ff ff 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 90 01 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 05 00 53 00 65 00 67 00 6f 00 65 00 20 00 55 00 49 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ..
e8 ff ff ff 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 90 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 53 00 65 00 67 00 6f 00 65 00 20 00 55 00 49 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ...

As you can see, I underlined the few that are different. But that tells me nothing. I would like to create that script and know without a doubt that when I run it, it's going to change the text size to 12, or to 14 or whatever I want.

Also, I want to change the scroll bar size to 28, also very easy to do with Winaero Tweaker, but it's another element that gets defaulted to a tiny width after an update, or at random.

So I want this script to basically change the the text size in these items from the default of 9 to 12, so if Windows ruins them with an update, I can simply run that .bat file as admin, reboot, and everything is the way it should be. But I also want that script to not screw my Windows installation.



Suggestions, please?


Edition Windows 11 Pro
Version 25H2
Installed on ‎1/‎9/‎2025
OS build 26200.7840
Experience Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.26100.291.0

sebarious said:

Also, I want to change the scroll bar size to 28, also very easy to do with Winaero Tweaker, but it's another element that gets defaulted to a tiny width after an update, or at random.

Click to expand...

I don't know why Winaero or the registry edits are not working for you.
I changed the scroll bar size in Oct 2021, and it's hasn't changed back since then.

It's been almost 5 years, but I seem to remember that not ALL sizes for the scroll bar worked.
But certain sizes did seem to work and stay changed.

Personally, I liked -330 and it hasn't changed since I set it.




On a side note... here's ten points just for filling out your computer specs.

Ghot said:

I don't know why Winaero or the registry edits are not working for you.
I changed the scroll bar size in Oct 2021, and it's hasn't changed back since then.

Click to expand...

Interesting. I have no idea why, it used to be that registry edits would survive even major updates. But in my case, all the stuff I change with Winaero Tweaker reverts back to defaults with pretty much every update.

Ghot said:

Personally, I liked -330 and it hasn't changed since I set it.

Click to expand...

So are you referring to only scroll bar sizes, or other changes? I noticed that your text hex string starts very different from mine.

sebarious said:

Interesting. I have no idea why, it used to be that registry edits would survive even major updates. But in my case, all the stuff I change with Winaero Tweaker reverts back to defaults with pretty much every update.


So are you referring to only scroll bar sizes, or other changes? I noticed that your text hex string starts very different from mine.

Click to expand...

Very rarely, a Winaero tweak will get reset by and update, but not by a reboot by itself.
I have drivers included with Windows Updates blocked... and sometimes MS turns that back on.

But I'm now in the habit of checking the few Winaero settings I have after updates.

The easiest way to check... is to start to export your Winaero settings.
These are the things I have tweaked in Winaero.
Except for Windows Defender (RED dot)... Bitdefender tweaked that.




If you take a screen shot of this and save it somewhere, you can compare it to a new "export" after Windows Updates.

The actual Winaero "export" is an .ini file. A screen shot is much easier to read.

Ghot said:

The easiest way to check... is to start to export your Winaero settings.

Click to expand...

Cool, didn't know you could do that. However, I'd still like to make the script, so I simply right click, run as admin and Bob's your uncle. Or mine, in this case.

This happens because software developers in their 20s have eagle eyesight to read tiny text. I use WinAero Tweker too to change the font size after it defaults to tiny faults afer a major upgrade. I just apply the changes then log out/in and all works.

There was a very similar discussion on this site: Win11 24H2 Not remembering changes to fonts after reboot

I've linked to the OP's final comments. Perhaps it will help you. You could also check the order in which the video ports on your graphics card are found and whether it makes any difference which way your monitors are connected.