The fonts that come installed on your Kindle are good, if a little bland. Should your typographical tastes run a little differently, though, you can install almost any font you like on your Kindle. Here’s how.
Finding Font Files
Fonts come in a couple of different formats. Kindles only support TrueType (TTF), OpenType (OTF), and TrueType Collection (TTC), so whatever font you add has to be in one of those formats.
You can find font files pre-installed on your computer, or you can download them from the internet. One great source of free font files is Google Fonts. For this article, I’m going to add Libre Baskerville to my Kindle.
A couple of quick notes before we dive in:
- Some fonts are designed to look good on a screen, while others are designed for print. Bookerville and Ember, for example, were designed by Amazon to take full advantage of the Kindle’s E-ink screen. This means that some fonts you can install might look a little weird.
- You should install the full font family, including any bold or italic variations, where possible. This might mean installing multiple TTF files. To fully add Libre Baskerville to my Kindle, I had to add LibreBaskerville-Bold.ttf, LibreBaskerville-Italic.ttf, and LibreBaskerville-Regular.ttf.
How to Install a Custom Font on Your Kindle
Installing fonts on a Kindle involves nothing but adding them to a specific folder.
Connect your Kindle to your computer and open it in File Explorer or Finder. Navigate to the “Fonts” folder and drag-and-drop your font files to add them.
Safely disconnect your Kindle, and you’re good to go.
How to Select a Custom Font on Your Kindle
Open the book that you’re reading, tap the top of the screen, and then tap the “Aa” button to open the Display Settings menu.
Tap “Font” and “Font family,” and then select whatever custom font you added.
You can see that Libre Baskerville has been added to the default options available.
Tap anywhere at the top of the screen to exit the menu, or tap “Font family” to go back a level so that you can configure the Size and Bold of the text.
When you select a custom font, your Kindle will use it wherever it can in the book. If it’s missing glyphs or there’s a specific font choice hardcoded into the e-book file, you’ll see a different font in those sections.
