How to increase size of GUI/font/everything of Oracle SQL Developer 18.1

I downloaded Windows 64-bit with JDK 8 included of SQL Developer 18.1.

To run Oracle SQL Developed I just unzipped the file and run the sqldeveloper.exe contained in the folder.

Unfortunately, as you can see in the image the size of everything is extremely small and very difficult to see.

This issue appears exclusively with this software.

How can I resolve it?

I also faced a similar issue when installed this on Windows 10. The issue has to do with compatibility settings.

I have fixed it following the steps given below:

1. Get shortcut of sqldeveloper at your desktop

2. Ensure that you have admin rights in your PC

3. Right Click on sqldeveloper icon and select Properties.

4. Go to the Compatibility tab:

   • Compatibility mode change it to windows 7
   • Check the option of Override high DPI scaling beaviour
   • Select "System" in drop down below

5. Apply

6. Re-Launch the application

I guess this is a subjective statement - but that doesn't appear SMALL to me.

However, if you're using an OS accessibility feature to increase the size of text in your applications, the new 'Welcome Page' can interfere with that.

Uncheck 'show on startup' in the Welcome page

Restart SQL Developer.

You should be good.

The Welcome page uses JavaFX to render some HTML and this is apparently getting in the way due to a Java bug. We're looking to mitigate or fix this for a future release.

If that doesn't work, you can also try to actually increase the UI font size.

I talk about how to do that here

This is what it looks like bumped up to font size 14

Find your ide.properties file.

Windows: It's in your OS User's AppData, Roaming, SQL Developer, systemX.Y.Z..., o.sqldeveloper directory where X.Y.Z... represents your version of SQL Developer.

Linux/Mac: It's in your $HOME/.sqldeveloper, systemX.Y.Z, o.sqldeveloper directory.

You’ll notice this file is VERY well documented. There’s a section that speaks to Windows in particular. To change the default size for all look and feels, add this line, the uncommented one:

# To modify the font size for a particular locale under all
# look-and-feels, set the Ide.FontSize.<languageID> property. For
# example:
Ide.FontSize.en=14

2018 Update

On my 4k Mac Mini (2018 build if that matters):

• Oracle 8 JDK
• SQL Developer 18.3
• Mac OS X look and feel
• Ide.FontSize=21

This is how SQL Developer looks:

I changed font style and size from available settings from SQL developer. We can change using Tools -> Preferences ->Code Editor -> Fonts

Fixed this for myself in Oracle Linux 8, but is also worth trying in RHEL and Fedora, if you use either of those.

If SQL Developer is running, close it.

With superuser privileges, open the following file for editing:

sudo nano /opt/sqldeveloper/sqldeveloper/bin/sqldeveloper.conf

Add the following two lines at the end:

AddVMOption -Dsun.java2d.uiScale=2
AddVMOption -Dsun.java2d.uiScale.enabled=true

Restart SQL Developer.

If the interface still looks too small, or too big, change the uiScale value (untested).

I had the same issue, if you still could not fix the problem with the given solutions, for me also worked the following:

Go to the Display Settings;

Go to scaling and "reset it": change to another scale, for example, 100% and then to your preferred scale;

This should force the SQL-Developer Window to your preferred scale, unfortunately you have to repeat this procedure after every new SQL-Developer launch.

change the setting from "Compatibility tab" as highlighted in the above post was the only way to make the icon much more larger