Add UI Scaling

[surfacist]

The After Effects user interface is very diffuclt to work with at 4k, even on very large monitors. To wit, on a 32" monitor at 3840x2160, the text of a layer name is 1/16 of an inch tall– 8 layers are packed into each vertical inch. The Console Debug "AdobeCleanFontSize" workaround has no effect on some aspects of the interface, such as layer names, text in effect control panes, etc. This undersized UI poses legibility challenges, and slows workflow by requiring an extrordinary level of pointing accuracy to click on things.

Illustrator solves this problem elegantly by adding a "UI scaling" slider control to the "User Interface" pref pane. Photoshop solves this problem a bit less elegantly but still effectively with a "UI Font Size" and a "Scale UI to Font" option.  I suggest the AE team adopts one of these appoaches.  I'd also suggets that this be a very high priority. It is necessary for most AE artists to work at 4k these days, making this an annoyance that I deal with every single day. I feel this is the most glaring feature oversight in AE currently.

Thank you for your consideration, AE dev team. And if you are a fellow AE user reading this and you have the same issue be sure to upvote, because apparently upvoted posts in this forum is what passes as a feature request/bug report nowadays.

Thanks!

[rpaulseymour]

I'm just on a 15" MacBook Pro, and I can't believe I can't make the font larger. In other Adobe apps maybe it seems to bother me less, but in AE it's a must have, somehow. For a company like this, as an aside, I can't believe they don't have their own internal cross-platform universal UI code/component library that would support such basics across the board. I mean... It's Adobe! They literally make UI design software. 

[defaultlyi3hd2g188g]

@admin Please implement UI zoom like Illustrator!

[leviglass.ca]

Workaround using Mac is to change the system text size per monitor:

Apple Icon > System Preferences > Displays > Display Settings 

Choose timeline monitor then scale resolution 

-lrg

[Rick Adams]

Thank you for this reply however, this just makes everything bigger, not just the text in the user interface. Additionally, this doesn't apply to just After Effects, it affects every application on that display. This is a solution, however, I would call it a nuclear option. Thank you.

[leviglass.ca]

I suppose, it's a nuclear option that can be turned on and off. lol I just switch my monitor that runs the timeline when necessary. Cheers! 

[suzanneg35689193]

I have this problem, too. The text is so tiny, I can barely read it. In this day and age of ADA, you'd think the option to adjust the GUI for people with less than 20/20 vision would be a given. I can read all the text in my other apps. Has anyone found a solution to this problem yet? This question was initially raised back in 2014?!

[suzanneg35689193]

...and the link given refers to a non-existent page... So this issue remains unaddressed and unresolved, as far as I can see... Any advice?

[A27373342yvuf]

How's it possible that there's still no option inside After Effects to manipulate the blody font size of the UI text elements ? 

I'm not talking about what the current version of the Debug Database View under AdobeCleanFontSize is capable of changing.  As this only applies to certain things. It doesn't include: font size for layer names, project items, the Effects Controls, Effects & Presets and more...

I mean ? For real ? We a small indie company or what ?

there are people that have vision impairment, that use a wide screen with a high resolution

Don't even dare to tell me to increase the scale and layout within windows itself.

[Swandive stream]

As of current the font size is so small that I can't see what I am doing easily. It's considerably prohibitive when I'm struggling to read the layer names and other elements (24" screen). This is a common issue for users.

[Rick Gerard]

This is a very common feature request. It has my vote.

[Swandive stream]

 Yeah, thinking if we make enough noise Adobe might look into it, might.

[fredBerria]

Everything is tiny on wide screen (and retina too). Even Chrome tools bar seems far far way. My workaround was to buy some glasses.

[splines]

Unfortunately, this is still an issue in September 2023. It's barely possible to work with the tiny AfterFX interface on my 4K monitor. This is a state of affairs I would not expect in an era where there are tons of programs around getting UI scaling done properly like Blender, Ableton Live, Microsoft Office Apps, VSCode, Windows Terminal etc. I kindly ask the Adobe team to put this high up in their backlog as I consider this to be very urgent - and apparently I'm not the only one with this opinion.

I'm afraid I don't know of any good alternatives to Adobe After Effects. I need a program for motion graphics mainly in 2D with the ability to easily deal with vector graphics (no rasterization while editing, just when rendering). Fusion in Davinci Resolve does not support vector graphics to my knowledge. Blender doesn't seem right for these motion graphics things including tasks like animating text. Unreal or Unity? Haven't tried those yet.

[Shebbe]

I would also like to see a fully smooth scalable UI via a slider. It would probably require a redesign of the way their UI functions though... don't see it happening very soon.

It does scale along with OS scaling however so you can use that as a workaround for now although all your software will be affected by it.

[avanrossum]

People have been asking for this for at least 13 years. I doubt it will ever show up, but we can still hope

[Aril34334265y13h]

Whoa, 3 years later and this post is the only one I found that actually did the trick.

Thkx a lot Veronica, you rock! 🙂

[Russell34771311wc2d]

THANK YOU! I searched all over and you're the only one that worked PHEW!

[Danny51]

Yes please! Adobe Team, whats the ETA on this very basic feature that other Apps already have?

[tn12345678910]

YES! This feature is so needed. Giant 4K+ monitors don't play well with tiny text and human eyes. Needed this for a long time now.

[tn12345678910]

Need this ability. Font and UI scaling have been a missing necessity for a long while now. No one will use AE when we are all blind from these tiny elements.

[FIDUS GRP]

How can Adobe not allow users to change font size? I can't believe it's October 2024, and there is still not a solution to this. 

[Kevin-Monahan]

Please upvote.

[Danny51]

New AE Version just dropped and still no UI scaling.

[jackthegiantkiller]

I really don't understand Adobe, what is the point of this Spectrum UI if they are not going to give us any control over the font size? They have also broken the old hack of setting the "AdobeCleanFontSize" in the AE Console, as this term no longer shows up in search. It also breaks many critical older Script UI Panels such as Keystone and Rift. Ugh...😑 

[napsmear]

After latest Oct update to AE 25.0 the UI labels are much harder to see now, even the icons along the bottom of the Comp and Project Panels are smaller.

also...Theme colorizer no longer works.