Increase the TTY font on Asahi Linux

My personal laptop is a Macbook M1 running Asahi linux.

When starting the laptop, the font on the TTY is ridiculously small, as the resolution of the screen is very high.

I wanted to use a bigger font, and this is how I solved the issue.

Find a font and try it out

The first step is to find the fonts installed on your system. You can find them in /usr/lib/kbd/consolefonts.

Most fonts will have an indication of the size in their name, the number representing the size.

For example latarcybheb-sun16 would be 16px high, as opposed to latarcybheb-sun32 being 32px.

You can try the font out by jumping into another TTY via Ctrl + Alt + F<n> where <n> is the TTY number, e.g. Ctrl + Alt + F2 will switch to the second TTY1.

Then type setfont <my-font> to try out a font. Replace <my-font> with the desired font, such as: 

setfont latarcyrheb-sun32

Set the font permanently

In order to set the font permanently you need to edit two files:

  1. The configuration file for the virtual console (man 5 vconsole.conf).
  2. Modify and Regenerate the GRUB configuration file (man grub-mkconfig).

Virtual configuration file

In /etc/vconsole.conf, modify the FONT variable such as: 

KEYMAP="us"
FONT="latarcyrheb-sun32" # <-- the chosen font

Grub configuration file

In /etc/default/grub, append to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT "vconsole.font=<my-font>" such as: 

GRUB_DISABLE_SUBMENU=true
GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY=true
GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER=true
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="rootflags=subvol=root vconsole.font=latarcyrheb-sun32" #<-- Append the font chosen here
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR="Fedora Linux Asahi Remix"
GRUB_ENABLE_BLSCFG=true
GRUB_GFXMODE=auto
GRUB_TERMINAL_INPUT="console"
GRUB_TERMINAL_OUTPUT="gfxterm"
GRUB_TIMEOUT=5
GRUB_TIMEOUT_STYLE=menu
GRUB_DEFAULT=saved

Then regenerate the configuration by running grub2-mkconfig: 

sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grub.cfg

That's it! Now reboot your system and you should see the new font configuration.

I chose latarcybheb-sun32 as it is large enough to read, and look standard.

Footnotes:

1

TIL, this is a pretty handy tip!