tails-bigfont

Enlarge the microscopic GRUB boot/kernel-select menu text on a Tails USB stick.

Why this works (and the font approach doesn't)

GRUB's gfxterm keeps its embedded ~16px unicode font as the default no matter what you loadfont. So building a bigger PF2 font and loading it does nothing (verified — no visible change). The dependable lever is graphics resolution: a smaller canvas makes the unchanged native font occupy a much larger share of the screen.

The tool writes this line into Tails' GRUB config, right before terminal_output gfxterm:

set gfxmode=640x480,800x600,1024x768,auto

GRUB picks the first mode the firmware's GOP actually offers (smallest → biggest text), with auto as a safety fallback so it can never blank. It also sets set timeout=15.

Only the unencrypted Tails system partition (vfat, label Tails) is touched — never the LUKS Persistent Storage partition. A one-time .bak of each config is kept for easy revert.

Install (any Linux)

install.sh is self-contained — it carries the whole tool embedded. Copy just that one file to any machine and run it:

./install.sh          # install command + `tailsfont` function / `tailsbig` alias
./install.sh --root   # also wire root's shells

It installs tails-bigfont to /usr/local/bin (or ~/.local/bin if it can't), and adds a tailsfont function + tailsbig alias to bash, zsh, and fish.

Use

Plug in the Tails stick and run any of:

tails-bigfont           # auto-detects the vfat 'Tails' partition
tailsfont               # shell function (same thing)
tailsbig                # alias

tails-bigfont -t 10     # custom GRUB timeout (default 15)
tails-bigfont -d /dev/sdb1   # force a specific partition
tails-bigfont --revert  # restore from .bak (or just remove the gfxmode line)

Auto-discovery: the tool finds the stick itself via lsblk (matches LABEL=Tails, FSTYPE=vfat). Override with -d only if you have more than one plugged in.

It mounts with udisksctl (no sudo) when available, falls back to sudo mount, and unmounts the same way it mounted. The edit is idempotent — re-running strips any prior gfxmode/custom-font lines first, so it's always safe to run again (e.g. after a Tails auto-upgrade rewrites the boot files). You will need to re-run tailsbig after any Tails OS system upgrade. Tails always re-writes GRUB during the upgrade, and the enlarged GRUB menu rendering is removed.

Files

• tails-bigfont — the standalone tool.
• install.sh — self-contained installer (embeds an identical copy of the tool).
• deploy.sh — separate local one-shot for root: runs install.sh --root.
• LICENSE — MIT License.

install.sh is the canonical portable artifact; the embedded copy is kept byte-identical to tails-bigfont at build time.

License

MIT License — see LICENSE.

Each script carries the copyright and licence notice in its own header, so the terms travel with install.sh even when it is copied to another machine on its own, without the rest of the repository.