List of Fonts Available on the iPhone

The system font on the iPhone is a good choice for many purposes. You can easily select it in a regular, bold or italic style using built-in font class methods. For example


  UIFont *mainTitleFont = [UIFont boldSystemFontOfSize:14.0];
  UIFont *subTitleFont = [UIFont SystemFontOfSize:14.0];
  UIFont *textFont = [UIFont italicSystemFontOfSize:12.0];

But what if you want a font using both bold and italic at the same time, or a different typeface altogether? In that case, you can use the “fontWithName” method as follows.


  UIFont *altFont = [UIFont fontWithName:@"Courier-Bold" size:14.0];

This is all well and good, but how did you know what font names and variants are available? If you just guess and get the name wrong, your code will throw an exception – there is no graceful mapping to nearest available font here!

I couldn’t find the list of available font names anywhere in the iPhone documentation, or for that matter even with a web search (at least within the first few pages of returned results). So instead I wrote a small snippet of code to list them for me.


  // List all fonts on iPhone
  NSArray *familyNames = [[NSArray alloc] initWithArray:[UIFont familyNames]];
  NSArray *fontNames;
  NSInteger indFamily, indFont;
  for (indFamily=0; indFamily<[familyNames count]; ++indFamily)
  {
      NSLog(@"Family name: %@", [familyNames objectAtIndex:indFamily]);
      fontNames = [[NSArray alloc] initWithArray:
          [UIFont fontNamesForFamilyName:
          [familyNames objectAtIndex:indFamily]]];
      for (indFont=0; indFont<[fontNames count]; ++indFont)
      {
          NSLog(@"    Font name: %@", [fontNames objectAtIndex:indFont]);
      }
      [fontNames release];
  }
  [familyNames release];

Using the iPhone SDK v2.1, the resulting output was as follows.


Family name: Hiragino Kaku Gothic ProN W3
    Font name: HiraKakuProN-W3
Family name: Courier
    Font name: Courier
    Font name: Courier-BoldOblique
    Font name: Courier-Oblique
    Font name: Courier-Bold
Family name: Arial
    Font name: ArialMT
    Font name: Arial-BoldMT
    Font name: Arial-BoldItalicMT
    Font name: Arial-ItalicMT
Family name: STHeiti TC
    Font name: STHeitiTC-Light
    Font name: STHeitiTC-Medium
Family name: AppleGothic
    Font name: AppleGothic
Family name: Courier New
    Font name: CourierNewPS-BoldMT
    Font name: CourierNewPS-ItalicMT
    Font name: CourierNewPS-BoldItalicMT
    Font name: CourierNewPSMT
Family name: Zapfino
    Font name: Zapfino
Family name: Hiragino Kaku Gothic ProN W6
    Font name: HiraKakuProN-W6
Family name: Arial Unicode MS
    Font name: ArialUnicodeMS
Family name: STHeiti SC
    Font name: STHeitiSC-Medium
    Font name: STHeitiSC-Light
Family name: American Typewriter
    Font name: AmericanTypewriter
    Font name: AmericanTypewriter-Bold
Family name: Helvetica
    Font name: Helvetica-Oblique
    Font name: Helvetica-BoldOblique
    Font name: Helvetica
    Font name: Helvetica-Bold
Family name: Marker Felt
    Font name: MarkerFelt-Thin
Family name: Helvetica Neue
    Font name: HelveticaNeue
    Font name: HelveticaNeue-Bold
Family name: DB LCD Temp
    Font name: DBLCDTempBlack
Family name: Verdana
    Font name: Verdana-Bold
    Font name: Verdana-BoldItalic
    Font name: Verdana
    Font name: Verdana-Italic
Family name: Times New Roman
    Font name: TimesNewRomanPSMT
    Font name: TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT
    Font name: TimesNewRomanPS-BoldItalicMT
    Font name: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT
Family name: Georgia
    Font name: Georgia-Bold
    Font name: Georgia
    Font name: Georgia-BoldItalic
    Font name: Georgia-Italic
Family name: STHeiti J
    Font name: STHeitiJ-Medium
    Font name: STHeitiJ-Light
Family name: Arial Rounded MT Bold
    Font name: ArialRoundedMTBold
Family name: Trebuchet MS
    Font name: TrebuchetMS-Italic
    Font name: TrebuchetMS
    Font name: Trebuchet-BoldItalic
    Font name: TrebuchetMS-Bold
Family name: STHeiti K
    Font name: STHeitiK-Medium
    Font name: STHeitiK-Light

So when choosing a non-system font, you just have to make sure that you choose a font name from this list. Whether or not the list of font will change in future iPhone OS updates remains to be seen. It may be worth re-running this code snippet to see.

Late Addition: For samples of each font’s appearance, see my more recent post.

Written by ajnaware

Friday, 24 October 2008 at 9:13 am

Posted in iPhone

16 Responses

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Awesome work Graham!

Bonus points for rendering each font in its own font

Keith

Friday, 24 October 2008 at 12:40 pm

Reply
Thanks Keith. Yep! I’ll do it as soon as I find time to create a view to display them. Hmmm… I think it was meant to be about 5 days per view wasn’t it? Maybe I’d better sell it in the app store once its done!

ajnaware

Friday, 24 October 2008 at 2:02 pm

Reply
interesting article thanks for the read!

Sysbase

Wednesday, 19 November 2008 at 5:39 pm

Reply
Looks like Apple removed the font “Hiragino Kaku Gothic ProN W6″ in the 2.2 software update.

Andrew

Saturday, 22 November 2008 at 3:16 am

Reply
Hi Andrew – thanks for the heads up so soon after the v2.2 release.

ajnaware

Saturday, 22 November 2008 at 11:42 am

Reply
[...] related posts: (automatically generated)List of Fonts Available on the iPhonetypographerSea KanjiWho should be a main Leader along-side [...]

Samples of Fonts Available on the iPhone « Ajnaware’s Weblog

Wednesday, 21 January 2009 at 8:59 pm

Reply
Great info! We will do a video tutorial and add it to our site on selecting fonts and showing how the fonts look on the iPhone.
Thank you.

iPhoneToot.com

Dave

Wednesday, 11 February 2009 at 8:59 am

Reply
Thanks a lot.
You post exactly what I was looking for. I do all my string renderings with quartz and have found no other way to select a font than from its name.

Jack

Tuesday, 24 February 2009 at 9:12 pm

Reply
[...] Let’s pick a new font. You need to set the font property of the cell to a UIFont. You’ll need a font name (a string) and a size. Here, we’re using Georgia. You can find a full list of font names here. [...]

Liven up your boring UITableView: part 1 « Iphone Development Exchange

Tuesday, 23 June 2009 at 11:45 pm

Reply
[...] 그리고 아래와 같이 간단하게 코드를 짜서 가능한 font 목록을 구할 수도 있습니다. [...]

[iPhone] iPhone/iPod에서 가능한 폰트 알아내기 및 목록 (All available fonts in iPhone) | Alones world

Wednesday, 15 July 2009 at 8:02 pm

Reply

Excellent work. Notice that ten of the fonts seem to have missing characters where the Roman alphabet glyphs are. But the rest display fine.

To create an array of font names for experimentation within code, I’ve modified your code a bit to read:

+ (void) listFonts {
	NSArray *familyNames = [[NSArray alloc] initWithArray:[UIFont familyNames]];
	NSArray *fontNames;
	NSInteger family, j;
	int numFamilies = [familyNames count];
	int numFonts = 0;	// tallied below
	printf("static char* fontNames[] = {");
	for (family=0; family < numFamilies; ++family)
	{
		//Log(@"Family name: %@", [familyNames objectAtIndex:indFamily]);
		fontNames = [[NSArray alloc] initWithArray: [UIFont fontNamesForFamilyName: [familyNames objectAtIndex: family]]];
		for (j=0; j<[fontNames count]; ++j)
		{
			Log(@"\"%@\", ", [fontNames objectAtIndex:j]);
			++numFonts;
		}
		[fontNames release];
	}
	[familyNames release];
	printf("};");
	printf("#define NUMFONTS %d\n", numFonts);
}

Brent

Sunday, 9 August 2009 at 8:49 pm

Nice work!

-yuzatom

Tom

Tuesday, 18 August 2009 at 4:48 am

Reply
Same code using OS 3.0.1:

Family name: AppleGothic
Font name: AppleGothic
Family name: Hiragino Kaku Gothic ProN
Font name: HiraKakuProN-W6
Font name: HiraKakuProN-W3
Family name: Arial Unicode MS
Font name: ArialUnicodeMS
Family name: Heiti K
Font name: STHeitiK-Medium
Font name: STHeitiK-Light
Family name: DB LCD Temp
Font name: DBLCDTempBlack
Family name: Helvetica
Font name: Helvetica-Oblique
Font name: Helvetica-BoldOblique
Font name: Helvetica
Font name: Helvetica-Bold
Family name: Marker Felt
Font name: MarkerFelt-Thin
Family name: Times New Roman
Font name: TimesNewRomanPSMT
Font name: TimesNewRomanPS-BoldMT
Font name: TimesNewRomanPS-BoldItalicMT
Font name: TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT
Family name: Verdana
Font name: Verdana-Bold
Font name: Verdana-BoldItalic
Font name: Verdana
Font name: Verdana-Italic
Family name: Georgia
Font name: Georgia-Bold
Font name: Georgia
Font name: Georgia-BoldItalic
Font name: Georgia-Italic
Family name: Arial Rounded MT Bold
Font name: ArialRoundedMTBold
Family name: Trebuchet MS
Font name: TrebuchetMS-Italic
Font name: TrebuchetMS
Font name: Trebuchet-BoldItalic
Font name: TrebuchetMS-Bold
Family name: Heiti TC
Font name: STHeitiTC-Light
Font name: STHeitiTC-Medium
Family name: Geeza Pro
Font name: GeezaPro-Bold
Font name: GeezaPro
Family name: Courier
Font name: Courier
Font name: Courier-BoldOblique
Font name: Courier-Oblique
Font name: Courier-Bold
Family name: Arial
Font name: ArialMT
Font name: Arial-BoldMT
Font name: Arial-BoldItalicMT
Font name: Arial-ItalicMT
Family name: Heiti J
Font name: STHeitiJ-Medium
Font name: STHeitiJ-Light
Family name: Arial Hebrew
Font name: ArialHebrew
Font name: ArialHebrew-Bold
Family name: Courier New
Font name: CourierNewPS-BoldMT
Font name: CourierNewPS-ItalicMT
Font name: CourierNewPS-BoldItalicMT
Font name: CourierNewPSMT
Family name: Zapfino
Font name: Zapfino
Family name: American Typewriter
Font name: AmericanTypewriter
Font name: AmericanTypewriter-Bold
Family name: Heiti SC
Font name: STHeitiSC-Medium
Font name: STHeitiSC-Light
Family name: Helvetica Neue
Font name: HelveticaNeue
Font name: HelveticaNeue-Bold
Family name: Thonburi
Font name: Thonburi-Bold
Font name: Thonburi

Tom

Tuesday, 18 August 2009 at 4:50 am

Reply
Hello !

I’ve made a quick little app to test the rendering of a text in all the fonts available on the iPhone.
You can find it at http://www.fontpickerapp.com

Cheers !

Etienne Segonzac

Monday, 24 August 2009 at 9:14 pm

Reply
Awesome work Etienne, thanks for this FREE app, really appreciated and helped me to pick a nice font for my game.

Cheers,
Guido

Guido

Wednesday, 26 August 2009 at 3:47 pm

Reply
- I’m happy to help
  
  Etienne Segonzac
  
  Wednesday, 26 August 2009 at 5:45 pm
  
  Reply

Ajnaware’s Weblog

List of Fonts Available on the iPhone

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