Any user working with an office text document editor or designer knows that a situation arises very often in which it is absolutely necessary to add some new font to the system, since the built-in set of the operating system itself is, to put it mildly, very limited. So, for example, it lacks oriental fonts, Gothic styles, etc., not to mention the many additional beautiful types of writing the same letters, developed by enthusiasts of their craft. How to install fonts in Windows 10, and what methods are best for this, read on. It’s worth mentioning right away that at the very end it will be additionally said about how expedient it is to add fonts to an existing set, and how this can affect the performance of a computer system.
View installed fonts
First of all, let's decide which fonts are already in the standard set. You can view its contents quite simply, using the PCM menu on this empty area of the “Desktop” with the choice of a personalization item where you need to go to the fonts section. In the same way, the desired section can be reached through the options menu.
Finally, you can use the corresponding section of the standard “Control Panel”, which is most easily accessed through the “Run” console by entering the control command. If you do not need any of the available elements, you can simply delete it using the buttons or the RMB menu for this. Here are just important system fonts like San Serifs or Caliber, which are used directly in the Windows interface, it is not recommended to delete, because all kinds of signatures to the icons, buttons or the contents of some menus may be unreadable, so you have to completely rebuild the current layout.
How to add a font in Windows 10 using the "Store"?
But we were distracted. Speaking about how to install fonts in Windows 10, there are several basic methods that allow you to carry out such operations as quickly as possible. And one of the easiest is to refer to a special section called the Windows Store.
In the font section, which was called up through the personalization menu, there is a special link for this at the very top of the settings window, after clicking on which you will be automatically redirected to the desired section of the "Store". It’s easy enough to select additional fonts for Windows 10 and click on the install or purchase button if the font itself is a paid product. Installation of one or several new components will be performed automatically and without your participation.
How to add fonts in Windows 10: instructions for the standard procedure
But let's assume that when accessing the same “Store” you did not find something suitable for yourself. In this case, to search for interesting or non-standard fonts, you can turn to the Internet search, where on sites such sets are presented in the form of one or several files responsible for writing the same letter, number or symbol in different styles (italic, bold, etc.). etc.), after which download the desired set and save it on your hard drive for future use (as a rule, the TTF and OTF formats are standard). But how to add a new font in Windows 10 from an existing downloaded file?
To do this, you just need to run it (preferably on behalf of the administrator), then view the contents of the content and, if you like it, just click the install button.
Adding fonts through the "Control Panel"
Now let's see how to add a font on a computer with Windows 10, using one more simple technique for this, which is to use the corresponding section of the "Control Panel", which was presented for viewing just above. In this situation, everything is also simple.
It is enough to drag the files of downloaded fonts, for example, from the “Desktop” directly into the described section, after which the system will automatically integrate the fonts. Some users immediately ask questions about how to add a font to Word in Windows 10. Elementary! Since the new components have already been integrated into the system, they will immediately appear in the list of available fonts in the editor itself. Only Word itself, if it was active at the time of adding fonts, needs to be closed, then restarted and select the desired spelling from the drop-down list.
Font installation steps in Explorer
Now a few words about how to add a font to Windows 10, using only the tools of the "Explorer" or some other file manager installed on the system. In the operating system for storing all writing styles there is a special folder Fonts, which is located in the main directory of the system (Windows).
Thus, you can simply copy the downloaded sets to this directory, but to perform such actions, you may need administrator rights, which will be directly indicated in the notification that appears.
What to do if there is no administrator rights?
But how to add a font in Windows 10 if there are no administrator privileges to change the above system folder? To do this, you can use the most interesting utility PortableApps.com Platform. After installing it on a PC or laptop, in its own Data subdirectory, additionally create the Fonts folder and copy the necessary font files into it, and then restart the application. However, this is far from the best option. It is much easier to disable the active "account" of the super administrator through the command line. The console itself initially just needs to be run on behalf of the administrator, and then write the line "net user administrator active: no" (without quotes).
Additional utilities
Finally, let's briefly dwell on how to add a font to Windows 10 using specialized third-party software products. One of the most interesting and simple is a small portable utility called FontMassive Light.
Its main advantages are the availability of advanced tools for managing fonts already installed or added by the user, support for non-standard font formats PFB and PFM, which are not always installed using the above methods, as well as the ability to convert font formats to each other. But this tool is useful to many designers working with the software package Adobe Illustrator.
Brief information about creating your own fonts
As for creating your own writing styles, it is often recommended that you first draw the fonts for each letter, number or symbol on paper, then scan the images, edit to fix all kinds of flaws, and then convert to the correct formats for saving and use. You must admit that this is not only a long, but also rather painstaking work, requiring at least basic drawing and perseverance skills.
It is much simpler to use a special program called FontForge, in which the process of creating fonts is simplified as much as possible, and the creation of custom styles can be done with automatic integration of fonts into the operating system environment.
How appropriate is adding fonts?
If you have questions about how to add fonts to Windows 10 after updating, if they were removed from the system for some reason, you can use the simplest way, which is to copy the Fonts folder to another computer ( and even with another operating system), and then add its contents to the appropriate directory on your own terminal. As it is already clear, there is absolutely no sense in referring to official Microsoft resources in such a situation (although the corresponding sets can be downloaded from there too).
Note: also, as an additional technique, you can use the usual addition of the desired language, for which all the necessary fonts will be installed automatically, or simply crush the components without installing language support. True, it is not a fact that they can be applied, say, to the Latin alphabet or Cyrillic alphabet.
So, how to add a font in Windows 10, figured out. It remains to say a few words about the appropriateness of such actions. The main problem is that if the system has an excessively large number of fonts, its operation slows down significantly. In some respects, this is similar to the problem of a bloated registry, which is not only fully scanned at system startup, but also directly involved in its work. The same thing with fonts, because their files constantly "hang" in RAM and incredibly "devour" memory. In addition, you can sometimes notice a decrease in the speed of access to the hard drive. Therefore, it is worth adding only those fonts that you really need in everyday work, but it is highly desirable to remove some unnecessary components of their main set. As already understood, one needs to be extremely careful not to accidentally get rid of some kind of system font, which can lead to many problems with reconfiguring the system interface. Finally, before you integrate new fonts into the system, always use the preview, because it may turn out that the name of the font or its style does not correspond at all to what you expected to see!