This won't be popular, but any time I see an android screenshot with a custom font it looks offensively bad to me. I still think it's important for accessibility reasons though, as certain fonts can be a big help for people with dyslexia.
this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2024
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The worst examples are the ones we remember or notice the most. Particularly egregious examples include those cursive looking fonts that looks like the handwriting of someone who likes loops too much.
The charitable version is that when PCs (I'll include the Macintosh in that category) were the dominant way people used computers, the average person struggled to use them effectively, often misconfiguring them or installing malware. I had hoped the fact that pretty much everyone born after the mid 1980s grew up with computers would help, but it didn't.
Mobile OS makers wanted to create systems that were harder to break so people wouldn't have be stuck with devices they couldn't use or expose their data to criminals. They did so in part by limiting the feature set. Vanilla Android won't connect to ad-hoc wifi networks despite huge user demand on their bug tracker. Google locked the issue without explanation.
I'll admit I haven't really thought about installing Fonts on Android despite my eagerness to customize it in other ways (I have root on all my devices). None of the things I do with an Android device require it, and heavily customizing the look and feel of the OS doesn't interest me.
Valid points! Like I was saying to some others, I don't really need a setting to go into and say here's my own fonts, but I don't like that it's not even doable (unless you know how to backdoor it?)
By the way, thank you for that link!!! That article is insightful as well as reminding me that there are other people who think exactly like I do; I was thinking it's like I could have written it myself, it's so in-line with how I think and what I complain about! I practically gushed when he made the CSI:NY reference without drawing attention to it.😄
Fonts are a lot more complicated than they appear. Font formats like TTF are binary executable. Basically that means a malicious font file installed can run commands on your system just by displaying what looks like the letter m. Fonts are also processed through an interpreter engine that renders their physical display on screen. Interpreters are nortoriousy a vector of attack because of their low level system access
Check out FontForge if you're interested in more
I'm not sure how much of what you're saying is accurate, but my iPhone has like thirty fonts. Android has five. I'm not asking for something unreasonable; I should be able to expect it and be surprised and disappointed that it's such a prohibitive notion.
All my Windows computers over the years have had hundreds of custom fonts I’ve installed. Never once had malicious code in a font, and that’s Windows - the biggest target for viruses.
I’m just saying by now it should not be considered superfluous or some kind of luxury, it should be considered expectable.
Monolithic OS. Plus being Immutable.
Immutable makes sense for a mobile device where you need a guaranteed way to ensure it functions as designed.
The rest is because phone manufacturers and Google (and Microsoft, et al) forsee a future where you don't control your OS, so they then control everything.
My bet is "because historic reasons".
I remember my Nokia 3220, which was the paradigm of phone personalization at its heyday. You could personalize almost everything of it - from its back cover to getting another chassis and/or keyboard with different colors, to its wallpaper, how things showed up in the "home" screen (wether if a list or a grid) to the ringtones and the light patterns they showed when the phone rang. You could even personalize said light patterns doing some dark magick with MIDI (I did one with the opening riff of Metallica's "Hit the lights" back in the day). Frankly that phone was the tits and imho everything regarding fun but useful phones has gone downhill from there.
But about the font? No, you could not set a different one. There was no other different font, and am pretty sure it was the exact same typeface as the one in the 1100. It was hardcoded.
Same story with a Motorola Rokr Z6 I had the chance to have - you could personalize almost everything from it (it ran Linux under the hood!) except its font.
I'd say Android dragged those concepts from those old phones, and it was just like a couple years ago or so they went "oh! shit! oh! shit!" and remembered about the fonts - all we had meanwhile was the Roboto font in Android 5, which imho was a huge downgrade from the ol' good Droid Sans family - so now they did some cheap ass effort to try to catch up. And meanwhile typeface formats have evolved a lot - not just bitmap fonts, not even just TrueType fonts, but OpenType fonts (I recall reading somewhere they're Turing complete?) and now variable fonts. Supporting all of that stuff doesn't seem easy, and it's not like AOSP or Google like to put effort in stuff people actually care - they'd spend some time or it or they can choose a subset of all of that to make their lifes easier. If they want to, that is.
And not that in iOS things are better, though - I recall having to do some weird shit with mobile iTunes or something to set my mum's favorite ringtone because it won't allow custom ones that easily as we can in Android.
OpenType fonts (I recall reading somewhere they're Turing complete?)
Oh god that sounds like a security researchers nightmare
I'm in awe
Yeah the ringtones used to be a pain in the ass because the carriers really wanted to make you buy them. But you could always use an mp3 converted into m4a format and then just rename the extension to m4r and sync it. But the way I do it is I use garage band. You make a new empty project from recording (don’t actually record anything) then import an mp3 onto the track and export then go into files and select the file and command make ringtone. The instructions are online now and ubiquitous. It used to be a secret lol. It takes like all of a minute to do.
That’s why my initial suspicion was with the fonts maybe they want you to buy fonts, because I did see in the Samsung store I think there are some for purchase but screw that. I downloaded the free ones and they get added to the settings list. There’s an app called iFont but it doesn’t support all devices, just some.
Anyway, I just think it’s rather pathetic. Back 30 years ago I was tilting a dump truck of TTFs into any computer I used so I’d have all the fonts I wanted. I had a repository of a few hundred megabytes of them. Still have them lol.
So why is it, 30 years later and a “Smart”phone can’t fucking let me import a font file.
PROGRESS
.
I think the main reason is Google wants to provide a predictable environment for the developers where not too many things can be changed so it doesn't visually break apps. Because for big corps really, really want their branding to be perfect, can't be caught with a screenshot of their app in Comic Sans.
You used to be able to install some pretty sick theme packs but over time everyone started shipping apps with its own hardcoded themes and theme libraries such that it looks identical between devices, so now we're stuck with whatever Google says is how it should look.
Back when I was a developer I had to turn off my theme for every demo because the clients would keep focusing on that and not their fucking app, and keep complaining it clashed so hard with their brand colors. Which I'm sure is part of why the stock theme now is so flat and neutral vs the Holo/Honeycomb days.
Well, several of my devices are rooted, one has Cyanogen one has Lineage and I’m working on a few others to see what I can put on there. I’m using Iconeration to make custom icon collections for my screens the way they appeal to me.
Everyone is obsessed with control. Fuck that and fuck them. Thank goodness the EU is hammering down on manufacturers and protecting consumer rights. That ends up propagating to the U.S.A. just because of inertia and it’s not worth making things multiple ways. But it would never happen here on its own because these companies write our laws. It’s good there’s still countries where the peoples’ liberties are protected. But I digress.
"Everyone is obsessed with control," says person trying to install custom fonts.
Sorry, I just thought the irony was funny. I'd be surprised if there wasn't an option to do this, what have you tried so far? And what device do you have exactly?
Well, what I obviously meant is obsessed with controlling others and others' behavior, possessions and lives.
one has Cyanogen
You are running a device that is nearly a decade without updates?
It's just for research and experimentation; none of these are on actual active duty.
You need to be rooted but this should do the trick using Magisk.
If you want to add all the Windows fonts, if you are on Arch just use this PKGBUILD and build it inside an Arch distrobox if you are on anything else. Just extract the fonts from the generated tar.zst file.
EDIT: Forgot to add the link (oops)
I’ll take a look at the Magisk one to see what it can do, thanks!
It should never be such a pain. TotalCommander allowed me to use any of my thousand TTF fonts by browsing to them and selecting one. That’s it. Simple and instant. It only works within the app for display, though. Of course, TotalCommander was made by the best, works on every device literally and fails at nothing at all. Maybe the Android developers should ask them how to code.
Installing custom fonts has never really been a popular thing on any platform except in niche cases. Perhaps the best known use case is for print design and publishing where designers expect to be able to use any font they want in a magazine layout and have the printers able to put it on the page.
On Macs in the 90s, it was the easy and fun thing to do, especially after the Fonts folder was created.
It was easy and fun until you had thousands of fonts in there, then programs would just crash when you opened the font selector. They weren’t expecting to be rendering previews for all those fonts and just ran out of memory. To solve this issue people invented font managers to allow you to carefully enable and disable sets of fonts before launching the apps you wanted to use them with.
Source: I briefly worked for a local printing press that had thousands of fonts.
Oh gawd. When doing IT support for graphic designers this was the wrost.
My random font that I always use from Corel Draw '97 is missing!
This print shop I mentioned would just tell all their customers “include the fonts on the floppy/CD or we send it back” and then they kept every single font people sent them for years and years. Eventually they didn’t need to ask because they just had everything!
Lots of people do real work on iPads and iPads have plenty of fonts. iOS while not as easy as on a desktop, does let you add fonts. Maybe it’s one reason why Android has all but entirely abandoned the idea of tablets. iPad is what everyone goes for because they’re meeting the users’ needs - mostly, anyway.
I love Android and wish it would be able to promise the same because I have much more freedom to customize and I have more authority over the software, storage, and more things. It’s just many factors seem to have been neglected, and rather than “it’s on the todo,” the attitude seems to be “no; you don’t need or want that,” and that’s supposed to be Apple’s sanctimonious stance, not Android.
Both Apple and Google take that stance all the time. Google is legendary for the number of products they killed (many that had millions of users). One of my biggest annoyances is how much they’ve dumbed down Google search and gotten rid of Boolean operators and other features I used all the time to narrow things down.
Well Google search stopped being about accuracy quite a while ago. It’s all about money now and directing searches to the highest bidder.
I don’t think Boolean operators are not able to be used anymore, are you sure about that?
I’m so sick and tired of literally everything in the world that has beautiful potential quickly getting turned into just another way to shovel in cash by feeding stupid and troglodyte level sophistication.
Can not one fucking thing remain intelligent and noble? Do we get nothing at all? Everyone sells out, ultimately - and I don’t even think it’s always by choice. Call me a conspiracy nut but I’ve long ago concluded that there are authorities maintaining an influence and status quo of ignorance and stupidity, and anyone who dares to try to serve up something better gets threatened or killed, bought out, whatever needed to put an end to their honorable intentions.
Samsung has plenty of fonts and you can use zfont for custom fonts as well. Not sure if other Android phones have the option tho
Ooh thanks. I will look into it.
I know Samsung has a variety but they charge for them. Fuck that I have like a thousand TTF files. But I’ll look at that app thank you. I tried iFont it doesn’t support the device I happen to try but I have several others I’ll see if any are supported.