I updated today and now all my i3 bar icons are very small. I haven’t changed the config or the fonts or anything, so I’m not sure how much answers to the similar issues I looked at are going to help me.
Any help would be appreciated. My icons are still very small after two updates.
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Try changing the fonts to a monospace variant, then reload i3 in-place. If you don’t see a change, you may need to log out and back in.
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Before doing this, make note of the font that your bar currently uses because you are then going to reverse the change. ← This is just as a sanity check.
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After you’ve reloaded or logged out and back in, check how the other font you switched to looks in terms of spacing and size. If it looks okay, you can just use it.
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However, if you prefer the previous font, then revert your change and see if it’s working now.
Looks like it didn’t fix it. However, I did notice that I have two icons that are correctly sized (the network and power icons). They are set with a span tag instead of an actual text icon like .
It may just be the font you are using. Try changing to another icon font you like and see if it works.
The video below is about polybar, but the workflow/fix is pretty much the same.
I’ve been able to restore most of my icon sizes by using span tags to set the font of the individual icons. Now I’m stuck on the power menu and power profiles icons as they use a bash array and I don’t yet know how to render a span tag in there. Same with workspaces.
Been holding off on recommending this because I know some users want to be as minimal as possible, however, I’d recommend using tint2 rather than the i3-bar.
It’s easier to understand and configure, and it is compatible with other WMs/DEs while also having more features — including highly customisable theming and window previews.
I can give you my config, if that would make it easier or more convincing for you to transition. Up to you.
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I have recently moved back to EndeavourOS and after about a month or two of use and updates, the icons in the i3 bar are small again. Again, I haven’t previously touched the fonts in the config file, so I don’t know why this is happening.
I tried changing the font size to no avail. Even a font size of 16 does not change the icon size.
I tried using a different font (Font Awesome) and nothing.
Where did you change font size?
If you still use i3blocks then in
~/.config/i3/config
bar {
font pango: Noto Sans Regular 14
seems to be effective.
That’s where I change it. And it does nothing after I reload i3.
fc-list | grep 'NotoSans-Regular'
/usr/share/fonts/noto/NotoSans-Regular.ttf: Noto Sans:style=Regular
fc-cache
It does not make any harm.
yay -Qi i3blocks
Name : i3blocks
Version : 1.5-4
…
All those commands check out for me.
If you don’t have backups. Exclude 2 files one by one:
https://gist.github.com/valerino/5647ed8e3dc5276107c20f4addcff945
Check the differences with meld or copy the actual files and replace with these.
You did not notice errors during update did you?
I did not notice any errors during update.
Went ahead and pasted the i3 config files you linked, with the exception of xfce4 terminal settings as it’s an xml file now. My icons have not changed in size after reloading i3.
If I were you and had enough space I’d make a backup (by timeshift at least) to a separate partition and reinstall i3 and pick up gradually my data from backup. (I apologise for not apologising.)
NB timeshift does not save your home by default.
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I don’t want to reinstall, it’s exhausting. Maybe there’s something else I could try or I can wait for anyone else who has ideas to share.
I updated today and rebooted and my icons are still small.
Try installing this Font Awesome (otf-font-awesome) package.
Then for the font use this inside the config file:
font pango: NotoSans 14, Font Awesome 6 Free 14
My reasoning here is, that NotoSans doesn’t provide many icons and the bar could fallback to another font without setting the size. For waybar on wayland I need to provide the bar with the font for the text and also the font for the icons. I’m not sure if that’s also the case in i3, but worth a try. According to the i3 user guide, you can define multiple font in one line, like in the code line above.
With both fonts specified?
Yes.