Install new fonts on iOS

Use AnyFont to add custom fonts to use in iPad or iPhone apps

In the early days of computing, you were limited to a tiny selection of ugly fonts, but today’s computers typically come packed with plenty of much nicer typefaces. The only problem is that what you get on one system may not match what’s on another. For example, even if you’ve never added to your Mac’s font collection, it’s going to be a whole lot bigger than your iPad’s.

This would all be fine if people still used a single device to do everything; but with the magic of the cloud, you’re now just as likely to be sending presentations and other documents between a Mac and an iPad. If you’re very fortunate, the app you’re using on the iPad might take fonts included with OS X along for the ride, enabling you to keep using them.

Often, though, you’ll find that when an iPad app can’t recognize a font, it’ll switch it for something different. With AnyFont ($1.99), you can use a clever system to install fonts from your Mac (or your PC – we assume Mac use in the walkthrough, but you can also access fonts in Windows systems from the Control Panel) . Alternatively, you can also grab new free fonts from the web, to install on both your computer and iPad – Google Fonts is a good place to start. You can add fonts you like to a collection, and then download them all as a ZIP.

Every font install through AnyFont requires a separate profile to be created. On that basis, you’re probably not going to want to cram hundreds of new fonts onto your iPad. For a few key additions, though, AnyFont works great. Our walkthrough shows the process when using iTunes; check out the tips for an alternative install method using Dropbox.