New Ubuntu font meets Android, looks stunning

By Benjamin Humphrey, Published October 5, 2010

OMG! Reader Nicholas Ipsen dropped by our inbox earlier today to show us some sweet Ubuntu font action in Android.

As you might expect, the new font that Canonical contracted type foundry Dalton Maag to design looks brilliant on Google’s mobile operating system.

Some screenshots:

Install the Ubuntu font on Android

Nicholas kindly provided us with some step by step installation instructions, for those of you who are daring (and have a rooted phone!):

1. Copy the fonts “Ubuntu-R” and “Ubuntu-B” from “/usr/share/fonts/truetype/ubuntu-font family” to the root folder of your phone’s SD card.

2. Open a terminal emulator on your phone, or use the adb shell command from a PC connected via USB (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=502010)

3. Type mount, then find the line which shows the block device mounted on /system. In my case the line looks like this: “/dev/block/mtdblock3 on /system type yaffs2 (ro,relatime)”

4. Now enter this command, using the information you just acquired:

mount -o remount,rw -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system

5. Now we make sure we have the right permissions:

chmod 777 /system/fonts/*

6. Finally, we move the fonts from the SD card to the /system/fonts folder, while taking a backup of the old fonts:

mv /system/fonts/DroidSans.ttf /system/fonts/DroidSans.ttf.bak && mv /system/fonts/DroidSans-Bold.ttf /system/fonts/DroidSans-Bold.ttf.bak && mv /sdcard/Ubuntu-R.ttf /system/fonts/DroidSans.ttf && mv /sdcard/Ubuntu-B.ttf /system/fonts/DroidSans-Bold.ttf

7. To make absolutely sure we didn’t mess up any permissions, run:

chown root:root /system/fonts/*

8. Now reboot your phone, and the UI should be using the Ubuntu font!

Thanks to Nicholas for the sweet tip!

Related posts:

  1. New Ubuntu font lands in Maverick for all users
  2. Quickly Install Google Android Fonts
  3. Quickly Install Google Android Fonts
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  • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

    Hurrah – you fixed the missing picture :D

    • http://interesting.co.nz Benjamin Humphrey

      I found a stupid flaw in wordpress – *all* images you upload end up in the gallery, so you’re bound to have duplication if you want to have an image in the post as well as a gallery.

      There’s no way to just mark select images for the gallery :(

      • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

        Boo :(

      • Anonymous

        WordPress has a lot of stupid flaws, but there’s probably a work around. I imagine you can upload a separate image to the media gallery and then embed it manually using an tag in the post, it shouldn’t appear in the gallery because it won’t have been ‘attached’ to the post. I haven’t tried that though.

      • Anonymous

        WordPress has a lot of stupid flaws, but there’s probably a work around. I imagine you can upload a separate image to the media gallery and then embed it manually using an tag in the post, it shouldn’t appear in the gallery because it won’t have been ‘attached’ to the post. I haven’t tried that though.

    • http://interesting.co.nz Benjamin Humphrey

      I found a stupid flaw in wordpress – *all* images you upload end up in the gallery, so you’re bound to have duplication if you want to have an image in the post as well as a gallery.

      There’s no way to just mark select images for the gallery :(

  • http://omgubuntu.co.uk/ d0od

    Hurrah – you fixed the missing picture :D

  • http://twitter.com/stee1rat SteelRat

    Hope they’ll make an app for ones who haven’t rooted their phones :)

    • http://twitter.com/the_compiler Florian Bruhin

      Changing the default font without having root isn’t possible.

      • http://5o1.co.cc/ master5o1

        How then?

  • http://nazriawang.com/ Nazri Awang

    I got this after step number 6

    mv: can’t rename ‘/system/fonts/DroidSans.ttf’: Directory not empty

    How do I fix that?

    • http://twitter.com/the_compiler Florian Bruhin

      weird… what does

      ls -R /system/fonts

      give you?

  • Anonymous

    Is Arabic supported in Ubuntu fonts?

    • http://blastfromthepast.se/ Tommy Brunn

      I’m not 100% sure, but I don’t think it is yet. At least I remember reading that in a mailing list (maybe the Ayatana one) as a reason for not using it by default in 10.10.

    • http://www.xnlab.net Xeriab Nabil

      No its not :)

    • http://google.com/profiles/koroskawy Tarek Saber

      it will be supported with Hebrew in 11.04

  • Anonymous

    I think the instructions are wrong this appears to install the Droid fonts not the
    ubuntu font family ones?

    • http://twitter.com/the_compiler Florian Bruhin

      No, the Droid fonts are the default fonts for Android. This is replacing them with the Ubuntu fonts.

  • http://twitter.com/nightmaaan Karol

    There’s also app called “Type Fresh” (for root users) that can easily change the font.

  • Anonymous

    When I run

    chown root:root /system/fonts/*

    I receive

    chown: unknown user root

    What gives?

    • http://twitter.com/the_compiler Florian Bruhin

      You DO have your phone rooted, don’t you?
      What output do you get with this commands?

      whoami
      ls -l /system/fonts/

      • Anonymous

        Yes I’m rooted. I made it all the up to that point where you make sure the permissions are reverted but I got that I error I wrote about.

        I ended up just rebooting thinking it wasn’t a big thing and I couldn’t boot back into my phone, it just hung at the HTC EVO splash. I ended up wiping and restoring.

        I used TypeFresh to do it this time. A lot easier than cmd line.

        • http://twitter.com/Sephiroth_VII Sephiroth_VII

          If ls -l tells you that all the files belong to root anyway, jsut ignore it. It’s just a step I added to make sure the permissions hadn’t been messed up, since I did that by using Astro to move the fonts the first time.

        • http://twitter.com/Sephiroth_VII Sephiroth_VII

          If ls -l tells you that all the files belong to root anyway, jsut ignore it. It’s just a step I added to make sure the permissions hadn’t been messed up, since I did that by using Astro to move the fonts the first time.

  • http://twitter.com/toetjesman henk de vries

    Canonical should contact Google, they might make it a default. Maybe even in chrome

    • https://launchpad.net/~m.lettner lukeen

      the used font set “Droid” (you can install it, “ttf-droid”) was developed especially for Android, so no they will probably not replace it ;)

  • http://twitter.com/mikeziri mwm

    this is for root users only!

  • http://twitter.com/Jeddycakes Jed Lampitt

    Ok nice. I own a Desire, which is a pretty awesome device,so I’d love to grace it with this….
    …but how the eff do you root a phone? Safely??

  • Pingback: Ubuntu Font (Schrift) unter Android - Android-Hilfe.de

  • Anonymous

    I totally did this a few weeks ago! It looks pretty good, but Droid Sans was designed w/Android in mind (or Android was designed w/Droid Sans in mind), so you actually get more text in the same space w/it. Some apps’ buttons don’t show up properly if their size is hard-coded and I believe the HTC lock screen gets messed up. Still, it’s pretty neat.

    • Anonymous

      After re-reading through the commands I see it’s the exact method I used as well… *sigh* I could’ve been famous. :P

  • http://twitter.com/savahtwit savah

    I got this after step number 6 as well.

    mv: can’t rename ‘/system/fonts/DroidSans.ttf’: Directory not empty

    Any ideas? HTC Desire, Cyanogen 6.0.1

  • http://twitter.com/tmedhurst tommed

    LOVE this hack! Thanks sooo much! :D

 
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