New: Exact Font Size Control for Text Fields in Firma.dev

Every text field on a signing document used to size itself. Firma.dev's auto-scaling logic picked something reasonable for each field independently, which meant a two-line address field and a three-character zip code field could end up rendering at completely different sizes on the same page. Functional, but it never looked designed. It looked assembled.

What's new: exact font size control

You can now set an exact font size on any text field, from 8px to 48px, instead of leaving it to Auto. The setting lives in the field properties panel in both the template editor and the signing request editor, including the embedded editors, so the control is available wherever your team or your customers build documents.

The size you pick is a starting point, not a hard rule. If a signer's input runs longer than the field can hold at that size, Firma.dev still shrinks the text down to fit the box. Nothing overflows and nothing gets cut off, you just get consistent sizing everywhere the value doesn't push the limit.

Where it applies

The chosen size carries through to every place the field renders: the signer's view on desktop and mobile, the sealed PDF, and the completion certificate. If you set a field to 12px, it shows up at 12px in all three places, not just in the editor preview.

A couple of details worth knowing before you touch existing templates:

• The editor warns you if a size is too large for the field's height, so you catch layout problems before sending.

• Existing templates are untouched. Fields without an explicit size keep rendering exactly as they do today.

• Signature and initials fields keep their own seperate fitting logic. This only applies to text-bearing fields.

For developers

If you're setting this through the API rather than the editor, it's a new optional fontSize integer (8 to 48) inside format_rules on any text-bearing field type: text, textarea, email, name, phone, company, title, number, date, dropdown, and url. It's part of the new TextFormatRules schema, and DateFormatRules picked up the same property, so a date field can carry a dateFormat and a fontSize at once.

{ "format_rules": { "fontSize": 12 } }

{ "format_rules": { "fontSize": 12 } }

{ "format_rules": { "fontSize": 12 } }

Out-of-range values get clamped to 8-48, non-numeric values are ignored, and omitting the property falls back to the previous auto-sizing behavior. It's fully additive, so nothing changes for requests that don't set it. Full details are in the API changelog.

Where this actually matters

The clearest win is on dense forms with a lot of small fields: I-9s, applications, anything closer to a spreadsheet than a letter. Locking every field to the same small size beats auto-scaling that picks a different size for each one. It's the same idea behind our HR onboarding guide, just applied at the field level instead of the document level.

It also works in the other direction. On a short, single-page agreement, bumping the acceptance field up to something large and easy to read makes the document feel more deliberate, not less.

Get started

Font size control is live now in the template and signing request editors. If you're setting fields through the API, check the format_rules reference for the full schema. Get started with Firma.dev for free, no credit card required.