I got a new 55 inch 4K monitor (well, actually it's a TV, but it's a nice TCL Q6 LED TV) for my Mac.
But it appears the 4K quality of the monitor (which I sit about 4 feet in front of btw) is essentially useless.
When I switch to 4K everything becomes half as big. Text in most app windows becomes nearly unreadable. I have to go through the apps one by one to change the default font size, which usually fixes the app completely as the apps generally resize themselves to fit their own text. Sometimes you have to change 2 or 3 font or other size settings in each app. It's a pain in the neck I would have never expected, but it's doable. There's no global way of just making everything bigger.
There's a preference panel Desktop & Dock which nicely has two different sizing controls, and they allow a nice continuous range of sizes so it can be set just right for your monitor, distance, vision, and the number of apps you usually have open.
But there is one thing which simply cannot be changed enough. And that is the size of the menu bars at the top of the screen and perhaps elsewhere.
That is controlled by a very hard to find control:
System Settings->Accessibility->(Vision) Display->(Text) Menu Bar Size
It has two options, Default and Large. On my 55" monitor, in 4K mode, 4 feet away, the Default setting is microscopic and the Large is still barely readable.
In 1080P mode, Small and Large are both useable by me, but I prefer Large (given my distance and old eyes).
Now when people complained about this with previous OS's, the advice given was to go into the Display settings, and "correct" your monitor size.
As of Sequoia 15.4.1, that option does not appear in Display Preferences. I thought I saw it previously, and it simply could not be changed. It had been fixed to 27 inches (and I previously had a 40 inch display).
So it seems you are not given any control over what the Mac sees the monitor as. I imagine this works correctly if they are connected via USB which communicates such information, as does HDMI (though I wonder if it's universally supported over HDMI). Now in my case, I have my monitors connected to my computers and other video sources through an HDMI Matrix Switch, so it's possible that information is not communicated correctly even if the TV supports it correctly.
But even then, I was thinking, suppose the Mac incorrectly believes for some reason that my connected monitor is 27 inches when in fact it is 55 inches. Well, it would then tend to make the menu bar larger than necessary it would seem to me, which is probably what I'd like, and instead it's making it far smaller. So WTF is going on anyway? Screen Size miscommunication may not be at the root of the problem after all.
What's needed is full user control of the Menu Bar Size with a very wide range, as offered for the Dock size. (Or better yet, a global control over the sizing of everything, so you don't have to reset the font size in each and every app. Or somehow keep everything the same size when switching from 1080P to 4K.)
I feel like I'm being persecuted for not having a direct monitor connection, I'm persecuted for old eyes, and not having a Mac monitor.
Somehow, you would think, that the Small and Large Menu Bar Sizes would be just perfect on a 4K Mac monitor (though maybe not still from my distance and eyes).
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