‘Fontcase’ open source app makes custom iPhone and iPad fonts easy and safe

Official support for custom fonts came to iPhone and iPad with iOS 13/iPadOS 13, however, it’s a complex situation with one of the best (main) options requiring a paid Adobe Creative Cloud subscription. Today, Fontcase has launched as a great free open source app to bring custom fonts to your iPhone and iPad.

As we covered in our walkthrough on using custom fonts with iOS/iPadOS, the tricky thing is that only a couple of apps offer official support. The most trusted option is Adobe’s Creative Cloud app, but that requires a subscription. There are other options like Font Diner, but the font choices are limited and/or paid.

There are other options to install custom fonts with third-party configuration profiles, but there are inherent privacy and security risks that come with doing that… so what to do?

The Iconfactory’s Craig Hockenberry wrote today in a blog post about exactly this conundrum and his research led Iconfactory to partner with developer Manolo Sanudo on what was originally called xFonts, now Fontcase.

It’s a great open source app that allows users to download and install custom fonts on iPhone and iPad. It uses a configuration profile to allow for the most flexibility and functionality but since it’s open source (view full code on GitHub), users can feel confident there are no privacy or security issues at play.

Installing custom fonts is super easy with Fontcase, once you have what you want in iCloud Drive or Dropbox, you just import the fonts in Fontcase, download and install a configuration profile, and they’ll be available across iOS/iPadOS.

You can see your successfully installed fonts by heading to Settings > General > Fonts.

Fontcase is available now as a free download from the App Store.

Full release notes:

• xFonts is now Fontcase – new branding to avoid confusion with another font app
• Now supports installing fonts from iCloud Drive and other Files storage locations like Dropbox
• An imported font can be previewed with its metadata
• Extensive help explaining the font installation process
• Support for Light and Dark Mode in iOS
• Adaptive layout that works well on all devices including iPad Pros to iPhone SE

Check out 9to5Mac on YouTube for more Apple news: