Tip of the Week: Change your System Font!

Posted on Thursday, Feb 21, 2008 by Malatesta
 
Filed Under: How To; Tags: tweak, font, tip, hack

segoe_ui_frutiger_next_lt_frutiger_45_small.png

Staring at your Windows Mobile screen day in and day out, you may notice a couple of things, including either that you are bored with the default “Tahoma” font or plain just don’t like the way it looks. Assuming you’ve already turned on ClearType to make the fonts a bit smoother looking, there is a new trick in town to help make your device look new again and maybe even easier to read.

Thanks to Merlin_reloaded & g77 over at the indispensable XDA, you can easily change your system font to one of three new ones: Myriad, Calibri or the most popular Segoe UI (our favorite too). The trick works on WM5 and WM6 Professional devices and maybe even some smartphone versions.

The process if very straight forward: download and install one of the .cab files of the font you prefer and do a soft-reset…and waala! Pretty new fonts. Don’t like the one you just installed? Simply hop to Settings  Add/Remove Programs and un-install, no harm, no foul. Of course, like usual, we here at WMExperts recommend a system backup JIK, but for the most part this is a low-level/low risk system change.

Curious at what Segoe UI looks like? There's a mini gallery to convey the new sharper, clearer fonts in some popular system apps. Take a peek, yo.


 
 

Comments

Bless you! I have wanted a choice of fonts for so long! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
MUCH MUCH MUCH better!
Thanks! What a lovely change. If anyone is thinking of doing this, its well worth it! Definitely go for it.

Surur
FYI, does not work on a Q. Thanks anyway.
Nice, but it's still someone else deciding which fonts to make available. I would like to see Times or Sylfaen (yeah, I'm old-fashioned).
I'm sure if you follow the instructions you can use any truetype font from your computer you want.

Surur
Quite right. Should've read the article first before commenting...
I've tried font replacement a number of times, but I always run into the same issue ... other software doesn't like the change.

I guess this has more to do with the application developers not using the right methodology for their character display.

I found a number of software packages were un-usable with the fonts supplied in this post. Garbage characters were displayed making impossible to read, and sometimes gracefully exit out of the application.

Many of the pop up notification bubbles at the bottom of the screen were also filled with garbage characters.
I've tried font replacement a number of times, but I always run into the same issue ... other software doesn't like the change.

I guess this has more to do with the application developers not using the right methodology for their character display.

I found a number of software packages were un-usable with the fonts supplied in this post. Garbage characters were displayed making impossible to read, and sometimes gracefully exit out of the application.

Many of the pop up notification bubbles at the bottom of the screen were also filled with garbage characters.


Hm, I think your hunch is right, though I wonder if maybe somebody knows a way around this? i.e. perhaps those font downloads aren't that great and there's a better way to get the font files?

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