RabbitVCS is an integrated VCS GUI client similar to TortoiseSVN. Like TortoiseSVN, it shows emblems over folders indicating the folder’s status (modified, unmodified, unversioned, etc.). The emblems packed with RabbitVCS, however, are too tiny for me, especially since I prefer to use list view when using my file explorer. I searched and did trial-and-error for a long time to try to increase the size of those emblems. This is the best solution I could manage.

Instead of crawling through arcane nautilus/nemo visualization settings and theme configuration files trying to find the right setting to increase the emblem size, I recommend simply changing the emblem icon file themselves. In fact, rabbit’s emblem files have lots of empty space that we can get rid of. Each emblem generally takes up an unchangeable amount of space over a folder icon, but rabbitvcs designs their emblems specifically to only fill the bottom left corner of this space. The remaining space is empty. By cropping the emblems so there is no longer this empty space, the emblems will appear larger when rendered over icons.

For this, you’ll need to install Inkscape and have access to a command line. Execute these commands (modeled after the one here)

cd /usr/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/emblems
sudo inkscape --verb=FitCanvasToDrawing --verb=FileSave --verb=FileClose emblem-rabbitvcs*.svg

This will command Inkscape to open up each SVG emblem file beginning with ’emblem-rabbitvcs,’ crop the image to include only the visible parts, then save and close each file. When you’re done, you might need to log out/log in to see the newly modified icons take effect.

The /usr/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/emblems directory is where rabbitvcs installed the emblems on my system. I am using Linux Mint 17.3.