System fonts

SystemFonts gives you the fonts installed on the machine. It finds them the first time you use it and keeps the result for the life of the process.

Use an installed font

using PinataLabs.Typography;

Font font = SystemFonts.CreateFont("Arial", 12);
Font boldItalic = SystemFonts.CreateFont("Arial", 12, FontStyle.BoldItalic);

CreateFont and Get throw FontFamilyNotFoundException when the family is not installed. The exception message, and its SearchDirectories property, list the folders that the library looked in. When you are not sure that a font is installed, use TryGet:

if (!SystemFonts.TryGet("Segoe UI", out FontFamily family) &&
    !SystemFonts.TryGet("DejaVu Sans", out family))
{
    throw new InvalidOperationException("No usable UI font is installed.");
}

Font font = family.CreateFont(12);

List the installed fonts

foreach (FontFamily family in SystemFonts.Families.OrderBy(f => f.Name))
{
    string styles = string.Join(", ", family.GetAvailableStyles());
    Console.WriteLine($"{family.Name}: {styles}");
}

The repository has a small sample that does this, in samples/ListFonts.

Where the library looks

On Windows, Linux and Android, the library looks in these folders and in all of their subfolders:

Platform	Folders
Windows	%SYSTEMROOT%\Fonts, %APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Fonts, %LOCALAPPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\Fonts
Linux	~/.fonts/, ~/.local/share/fonts/, /usr/local/share/fonts/, /usr/share/fonts/
Android	/system/fonts/

In those folders it loads files with the extensions .ttf, .ttc and .otf. It does not load .woff or .woff2 files from system folders.

On macOS the library asks the operating system (Core Text) for the list of installed fonts. To make it search the folders ~/Library/Fonts/, /Library/Fonts/, /System/Library/Fonts/ and /Network/Library/Fonts/ instead, turn on this switch at the start of your program, before you use SystemFonts:

AppContext.SetSwitch("Switch.PinataLabs.Typography.DoNotUseNativeSystemFontsEnumeration", true);

You can also set it in your project file:

<ItemGroup>
  <RuntimeHostConfigurationOption Include="Switch.PinataLabs.Typography.DoNotUseNativeSystemFontsEnumeration" Value="true" />
</ItemGroup>

SystemFonts.Collection.SearchDirectories tells you which folders were searched. With native enumeration on macOS, the list is empty.

Containers and servers

Many container images have no fonts. Then SystemFonts.Families is empty and every Get throws. You can:

• Ship the fonts that you need with your application and load them into a FontCollection. This is the most predictable choice, because the output does not change with the machine.
• Install fonts in the image. On Debian and Ubuntu, for example, apt-get install fonts-dejavu-core puts fonts in /usr/share/fonts/.

Culture-specific names

Like a FontCollection, SystemFonts has overloads that take a CultureInfo, so you can find and list families by their names in another language:

using System.Globalization;

CultureInfo japanese = CultureInfo.GetCultureInfo("ja-JP");
IEnumerable<FontFamily> families = SystemFonts.GetByCulture(japanese);