How to change fonts in Android without font management tool? at Black God

How to change fonts in Android without font management tool?

This HOWTO talks about how to change the default fonts in Android mobile without any font management tool. The system fonts are available in /system/fonts directory. DroidSans.ttf is the main font used in most of the applications. Overwriting the fonts in this directory with your fonts will change the fonts in the Android mobile.

This involves two steps. One is to get the /system/fonts directory in read-write mode and another one is transferring your fonts to /system/fonts directory.

1. Make /system/fonts with read-write permission. Follow my previous post of Mounting /system partition in read-write mode in Android to get it done.

2. Backup the existing fonts and copy the new fonts using adb tool. Here # is the adb root prompt.

# mv /system/fonts/DroidSans.ttf /system/fonts/DroidSans_org.ttf

Repeat the above command for the fonts you are going to overwrite as a backup.

# exit

$ exit

C:\android-sdk-windows-1.1_r1\tools>adb push c:\downloads\fonts\myfont.ttf /system/fonts/DroidSans.ttf
1145 KB/s (0 bytes in 73292.000s)

The above command will copy the new fonts. Repeat this command for all the fonts you want to overwrite.

C:\android-sdk-windows-1.1_r1\tools>adbshell

$ su

# reboot

Once your mobile rebooted, you can see your shining new fonts.

WARNING: Default font is tailor made for Android mobile to fit perfectly with all the controls and screen. There is a chance of imperfectness in your font for Android. In this case, you can revert back any time by following the above process.

Enjoy!

7 Comments. Posted by Black God on Saturday, April 25, 2009 at 7:00 am.

Filed under HOW-TOs, Andorid, Font, HOWTO.

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7 Comments on “How to change fonts in Android without font management tool?”

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Nathan and his Open Ideals » links for 2009-11-19 says:

[...] How to change fonts in Android? – Black God This HOWTO talks about how to change the default fonts in Android mobile. The system fonts are available in /system/fonts directory. DroidSans.ttf is the main font used in most of the applications. Overwriting the fonts in this directory with your fonts will change the fonts in the Android mobile. (tags: hack android) [...]

Posted on November 19, 2009 at 9:36 pm. (Reply)
Nathan and his Open Ideals » The Droid’s Dharma: Supporting the Tibetan Language on Android says:

[...] to the authors and developer behind the following posts upon whose work this effort was based: karuppuswamy.com: How to change fonts in Android? karuppuswamy.com: Mounting /system partition in read-write mode in Android android-devs.com: Adding [...]

Posted on November 20, 2009 at 11:31 am. (Reply)
Alvin B. says:

Better way to do it if you’re rooted – the above skips a couple of things.

1) You can simply do an adb “pull” to backup the font on the device. adb pull /system/fonts/DroidSans.ttf DroidSans.ttf

Before the push, you must remount, or you’ll get an error. that’s done by:
adb remount

Then finally, rebooting can be done over adb too!
adb reboot

Posted on February 10, 2010 at 4:06 pm. (Reply)
Anyone know how to get Arabic font support on this phone? - Droid Forum - Verizon Droid & the Motorola Droid Forum says:

[...] is in the market, I think it was around 3 bucks though. There are manual instructions here: How to change fonts in Android? – Black God But I'm not sure that's what you are looking for. I haven't come across anything for adding [...]

Posted on February 15, 2010 at 5:15 am. (Reply)
Ziv says:

Hello, I have a problem changing the fonts.
I rooted my device (HTC-Desire 0.80) successfully.
when trying to change the files in /system/fonts I receive: ‘write: No space left on device.’
I remounted the /system as read write.
please advice.

Thank you.

Posted on June 21, 2010 at 5:18 pm. (Reply)
1. Black God says:
  
  Ziv,
  Did you check the space on /system? try “df” command to know there is some space or not (I believe this command works in adb shell)
  
  Posted on June 21, 2010 at 9:04 pm. (Reply)
Post your Android Desktop - Page 15 - Android Forums says:

[...] you did, or stock to your device? Thanks. This is from a Nexus One, and the guide I used is at How to change fonts in Android without font management tool?. The font in these screen shots is DreamerOne, found at one of the free font sites. When picking a [...]

Posted on July 2, 2010 at 7:20 am. (Reply)

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Well said!

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