Increasing Font Sizse in Steam's Messenger

The default steam font size is considerably small, especially so on high resolution monitors. After switching to 2560x1440, I found it difficult to read messages sent to me through Streams chat client. I was then suprised that there is no intuitive method to increase the font size.

After asking a few people, putting Google search to good use and a bit of trial and error, I have managed to find out how to increase the font size for Steam's messager chat.

1. Go to: 'X:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\resource\styles' where X is the drive where you have Steam installed.
2. Copy the file 'steam.styles'
3. go to: 'X:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\skins'
4. Create a folder with any name. I called mine 'LargeFont'.
5. In your newly created folder, create a folder called 'resource'.
6. In your newly created resource folder, create a folder called 'styles'.
7. Paste the 'steam.styles' file which you copied in step 2.
8. Open the steam.styles file which you just pasted using a text editor such as Notepas++.
9. Search for the comment '// styles for text used in RichText controls in various places'
.
10. Underneath that comment, there are several 'font-size' values that we want to change. For the following sections, change the 'font-size=xx' to 'font-size=20'
    • console_text_error
    • console_text
    • friends_chat_text
    • friends_chat_text_self
    • friends_chat_history
    • friends_chat_event
    • friends_chat_bright_event
    • friends_chat_url
    • friends_chat_name_ingame
    • friends_chat_self
    • friends_chat_name
    • friends_chat_accountid
    • friends_chat_securitylink
    • Chat_MenuButton_withChrome
11. Save the file and close your text editor.
12. In your Steam client, go to: Steam > Settings > Interface.
13. Under 'Select the skin you wish steam to use', choose the skin you named in step 4, in my case it is 'LargeFont'.
14. Click OK and restart Steam if prompted.

Congratulations, you should now have increased font size in Steam messenger!