Email, Messaging, & Video Calls Email How to Change Gmail's Font Settings Spice up your emails with custom fonts and colors by Heinz Tschabitscher Writer A former freelance contributor who has reviewed hundreds of email programs and services since 1997. our editorial process Heinz Tschabitscher Updated on April 21, 2020 Email Gmail Yahoo! Mail Tweet Share Email Emails sent through Gmail don't have to be dull and lifeless. Format your email to add personality to your communications. Use a custom font size, pick a new font type, and change the text background color. Custom font changes work with all types of messages, whether you're replying, forwarding, or composing a new email. Combine these font changes with a custom email signature, and you have some fancy new approaches to your email communications. Lifewire / Maddy Price How to Format Your Email It's easy to change the font, size, and other characteristics of the text in the message, as well as the new text that you add. Open Gmail. Select Compose and type the contents of a message. Select the formatting options represented by an underlined A at the bottom of the message screen. Change the Font, Size, and Weight Highlight the text you want to change or set the options before you start typing. Select the font selector in the formatting options at the bottom of the screen and make a font selection from the list that appears. The font selector is located above Send. The next option over from the font selector is Size, labeled with a small T and a large T. Select it and choose from the sizes available, all the way up to Huge. The next three options indicate bold, italic, and underlined type. The option to add a strikethrough effect to text in a Gmail message is not supported. Change Font Color and Background Color in Gmail If color is your thing, fill your emails with it. Assign colors to the text of your email or the background, all from within the formatting bar. Highlight the text to which you want to change the color. Select the small A icon located to the right of the Underline button in the formatting bar to open two color palettes labeled Background color and Text color. Select the color swatch for the background color of the text. Select the color swatch for the text color. For example, use a blue background and yellow text. Any new text you add after the colored text appears in the same color scheme until you make a change. Alignment and Other Text Options By now, your email is looking decidedly interesting and undoubtedly eye-catching. The formatting bar contains a few more options, mostly related to alignment, that you may want to use. Align text: Next to the color icon is the text-alignment button. Text within a Gmail message can be aligned to the left, center, or right using the Align button.Ordered and unordered lists: Make lists using the next two buttons in the progression from the left of the formatting bar. Highlight a section of text and click one of these buttons to apply either bullets or numbers.Indent text: Some email programs let you tab to create an indent, but that isn't supported in Gmail. Instead, use the Indent More and Indent Less buttons to move text in and out of the left side of the page. You can also use it with a list to make sublists.Quote: Similar to the indent option is the Quote button that makes the selected text stand out from the rest with an indentation and vertical bar. What If You Change Your Mind? You made your decisions and clicked several buttons to get to this point, but if you aren't happy with the results, start over. Gmail provides a Remove Formatting button. The last button in the formatting bar removes the custom formatting options you made and converts everything to plain text. Select the text and click this button to remove the custom color, indentations, font changes, and anything else you added. Format Using Keyboard Shortcuts Most of these editing tools can be accessed through keyboard shortcuts. Hover the mouse over a button in the formatting bar to see its shortcut. For example, to quickly make text bold, highlight the text and press Ctrl+B on a PC or Command+B on a Mac. Press Ctrl+Shift+7 on a PC or Command+Shift+7 on a Mac to convert text to a numbered list. Save Your Changes as the Default If you love the new font changes you made, and want Gmail to use this formatting as the default for every message, edit the text style from the General tab of your email settings. Open Gmail on your computer. In the upper-right corner, select the Settings icon. Choose Settings. Go the General tab, then scroll to the Default text style section. Make the changes in this section to match the style you want for all future emails. Select Save Changes at the bottom of the page.