Request: Allow scaling or customization of toolbar icon size in Eclipse IDE

[marcoscmdev]

Hi everyone, and thanks for your work on Eclipse.

I would like to propose a small but important usability improvement regarding the UI scaling options in the Eclipse IDE, specifically on macOS.

Even though editor fonts and the Package Explorer can be scaled normally, the toolbar icons remain fixed in size on macOS. I have not found any option — in Preferences → Appearance or in configuration files — that allows adjusting or scaling their size.
For clarity, I am using Eclipse with the default built-in theme, with no third-party themes or custom CSS.

On high-resolution monitors (such as 2K or 4K), the toolbar icons appear noticeably small on macOS, which affects accessibility and day-to-day usability. Modern UI toolkits typically support scalable icons or adjustable icon sizes, so adding such capability would be very helpful.

It would be great to have:
• A preference to increase/decrease toolbar icon size on macOS, and/or
• Support for scalable vector icons (SVG), or
• An alternative theme with larger icon assets.

If such an option already exists on macOS and I missed it, I would appreciate any guidance. Otherwise, I believe this enhancement could significantly improve usability for macOS users on high-DPI displays.

Thanks for your time and for continuing to improve the Eclipse IDE.

Best regards,
Marcos

[basilevs]

I work on MacOS too and can't reproduce the problem. It would be nice to have a screenshot.

[marcoscmdev]

Hi, thanks for checking it out.

I’m attaching a full-screen screenshot so you can see how the toolbar looks on my side.
Just a note: the capture doesn’t show the real scale very well — in the screenshot the icons actually look a bit larger than they really appear on my display. In reality they’re noticeably smaller compared to the rest of the UI.

Let me know if you need any additional details.

[HeikoKlare]

To the best of my knowledge, MacOS has a very specific HiDPI/scaling behavior. It is only capable of treating a monitor as 100% or 200% (HiDPI). There is some mechanism that detects/defines whether a monitor is to be considered HiDPI. For example, the Retina display of MacBooks is always considered HiDPI and for other monitors I have seen in the resolution settings that some resolutions are marked as "HiDPI", like shown here:

Eclipse/SWT just adopts this OS behavior. This is why, e.g., on Retina displays everything is properly scaled to 200% (including toolbars/icons).

It would be great to have:
• A preference to increase/decrease toolbar icon size on macOS, and/or

In my opinion, this would be a great feature in general (i.e., allowing to scale the UI according to the user demands on every OS), but it would be quite a bunch of work if possible at all.

• Support for scalable vector icons (SVG), or

We have SVG support since the 2025-06 release.

[basilevs]

I’m attaching a full-screen screenshot

I see that icon size is consistent with font size in the attached screenshot. What is the expected behavior here?

[marcoscmdev]

Hi, adding some more details to clarify the situation.

I’m attaching another screenshot from the macOS display settings.
macOS does offer a HiDPI (2×) resolution for my 27” 2K external MSI monitor, but enabling it makes the entire UI extremely large and impractical to use. Because of that, I remain on the normal 1× resolution.

Regarding the toolbar icons: in the screenshot they may look “correct” relative to the overall scale of the UI, but in actual daily use they feel noticeably small for mouse usability. On a non-HiDPI monitor at 1× scale, the icons end up much smaller than on a Retina display, and the effect is more pronounced than what a static screenshot can convey.

I personally rely a lot on keyboard shortcuts, but having larger UI elements—especially the toolbar—would make the experience much more comfortable. Ideally, macOS would allow intermediate scaling values (125%, 150%, etc.) without requiring third-party tools, but since that isn’t supported by the OS, the UI feels underscaled on monitors like mine.

I understand that implementing UI scaling beyond what the OS provides, or allowing adjustable toolbar sizes on macOS, is a significant amount of work and may not be feasible in the short term. Still, I believe this could be a valuable future improvement for Eclipse, especially for users on non-HiDPI external displays.

Let me know if you need system details or more screenshots.

P.S.: The last screenshot I’m attaching is under the exact same fullscreen conditions, but using the HiDPI resolution offered by macOS (1280×720). In that mode, the toolbar icon size is perfect, but the overall UI becomes excessively large, which makes it unusable for normal work.

[basilevs]

@marcoscmdev so has your request anything to do with icons in particular or deals with overall UI scaling instead?

[marcoscmdev]

@basilevs

The request is mainly about overall UI scaling on macOS when using non-HiDPI external monitors.

The toolbar icons are the most noticeable part affected (they feel much smaller than comfortable), but the underlying issue is that the whole UI remains underscaled at 1× on these displays.
Having a user-defined UI scale factor — or at least the ability to enlarge toolbar icons independently — would significantly improve usability.

So in summary:
It’s not only about the icons; the icons are just the visible symptom of a broader UI scaling limitation on macOS non-HiDPI monitors.