Google is giving away over 1,300 fonts – this is how you use the fonts

Over time, numerous fonts end up on your Windows PC. In addition to the standard fonts of the operating system, such as Arial, Calibri, Tahoma and Trebuchet, there are other fonts that are also installed by programs. Microsoft itself provides additional fonts such as Georgia Pro, Verdana Pro, Arial Nova and Gill Sans Nova for free installation in the Microsoft Store. There are far more choices on Google at fonts.google.com. At the end of February 2022, there were a total of 1,359 font families with different styles – i.e. bold, italic, condensed, medium, light and mixed forms.

And the best:

All TrueType fonts and symbols in the Google catalog (TTF file format) are free and open source, so you can freely use and share them.

Finding the right font

Thanks to various filters such as category (serif, sans serif, display, handwriting and monospace) and properties such as thickness (thickness), slant (slant), width (width) you can limit the display of the fonts. Use the slider at the top right to change the preview size of the fonts in their boxes.

Clicking on a font takes you to the detail page. Here you can see the different styles (typefaces) each with its own preview. You can change the given sample text by typing or pasting your own text into the text box. A click on “glyphs” takes you to the glyphs – these are the written and special characters.

Do you like a font? Then just click on “Download family” and seconds later the zip archive is on your computer. Unzip the archive and double click on a font. The Windows preview window opens. Press the “Install” button at the top of the window. The font is then available to all applications in Windows.

You can find an overview of all fonts in the “Settings” app (hotkey: “Win + I”) under “Personalization” and “Fonts”. A collection of fonts is easily installed by dragging the files from File Explorer to the top pane. Fonts that are no longer required can be deleted with a click of the mouse.

More convenience with a free font manager

Font management with the Windows tools is sometimes tedious, especially if you keep looking for and installing different fonts for projects. Here there is no way around a special font manager: A recommendable program is FontBase. After the download and the quick installation, start the free tool. Fonts can be managed in collections and folders and assigned to projects, for example.

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With the freeware FontBase, you can access Google fonts directly on your PC and install them in Windows with one click and manage them in groups, for example.

A great extra is the direct connection to the Google font library: you can activate the fonts you want with just one click. They are then immediately available. Frequently used fonts can be marked as favorites or pinned. In addition to the free basic version of FontBase, Awesome is a paid version with an extended range of functions.