eat & code

Using custom fonts in iOS

So there is this list of fonts available on iOS devices at http://iosfonts.com/. But that’s kind of boring. Luckily you can add just about whatever typeface you’d like to your app. Step by step & code to follow…

First you need to add your font file to your project. I prefer to first add my files to my project folder and then drag it into Xcode to add it to the project. This way I can control how the folder is organized.

Once you have your font files added to your project you need to add a key to your info.plist file. The easiest way to do this is to click on your project in Xcode and then select your target. Then go to the Info tab and add a row (right-click > add row) under Custom iOS Target Properties. Name this row Fonts provided by application and make it an Array. Each item in the array should be a string that contains the the file name of each font (including the extension).

Now that your fonts are added to the project and are listed in your info.plist file you can call them pretty easily in your code. Occasionally the name of the font is actually slightly different than the file name. If you know the name you can simply use it as you would any other system font.

myLabel.font = [UIFont fontWithName:@"ProximaNova-Semibold" size:11.0];

If you the font isn’t loading and you are unsure of the proper name to use you can easily print all available fonts to the log. You just drop the code below where ever you’d like and it will log all the fonts broken into family. Once you’ve done that you just search the log contents for the font you need.

    // Get all the fonts on the system
    NSArray *familyNames = [UIFont familyNames];
    for( NSString *familyName in familyNames ){
        printf( "Family: %s \n", [familyName UTF8String] );
        NSArray *fontNames = [UIFont fontNamesForFamilyName:familyName];
        for( NSString *fontName in fontNames ){
            printf( "\tFont: %s \n", [fontName UTF8String] );
        }
    }

Things to remember

• Your font must be either .otf or .ttf
• The Mac file system is not case sensitive where as the iOS file system is. so if your fonts are working in the simulator and not the device, check your capitalization
• These custom fonts can be used in UITextViews, UILabels, and UIWebViews
• Just because you can use all the fonts in the world doesn’t mean you should. The more fonts you load the slower your app could become and the more memory you will use. Not to mention the irreparable damage you could do to your users retinas.