react-native android fontFamily does not take effect

34
votes

Question 1:

I add a fontFamily to index.android.js's welcome style, but it takes no effect. Does fontFamily actually work on android?

welcome:{ fontSize:20, fontFamily:'roboto-thin', textAlign:'center', margin:10}

Question 2:

if fontFamily works on android, is there a way to load custom font from assets? Or is this some feature to be implemented by react-native?

7
androidreact-native
What about using sans-serif-thin? – Simas
yes, "sans-serif-thin" works. – Matthew
Good. That's the standard way to use the thin font family. Android does not use the name roboto (except in the guidelines). Answering question 2: google it. It's unofficially possible and there are multiple questions about it. – Simas

7 Answers

52
votes

For Android: Custom fonts were added with 0.16.0-rc. So you need to have 0.16.0-rc version first and after that you can just download any fonts from the web.

  1. Put your font files in projectfolder/android/app/src/main/assets/fonts/font_name.ttf
  2. Remember to recompile which is: react-native run-android
  3. And then you can use fontFamily: 'font_name' in your style.
38
votes

Also note the following restrictions for custom Android fonts in react-native:

  • fonts must be placed in android/app/src/main/assets/fonts
  • only .ttf files are supported
  • The name of the file has to match the fontFamily exactly. For instance, if fontFamily is 'Source Sans Pro', the file must be called Source Sans Pro.ttf (and NOT SourceSansPro.ttf). Any suffixes as mentioned in the following paragraph are automatically removed from the file.
  • When the font is in bold and/or italic, it must use on the following suffixes:
    • _bold (e.g. Source Sans Pro_bold.ttf)
    • _italic
    • _bold_italic
7
votes

I believe the following is a cleaner alternative to the methods already explained here:

Put all your fonts in you React-Native project directory

./assets/fonts/

Add the following line in your package.json

"rnpm": {
  "assets": ["./assets/fonts"]
}

finally run in the terminal from your project directory

$ react-native link

to use it declare this way in your styles

fontFamily: 'your-font-name without extension'

If your font is Raleway-Bold.ttf then,

fontFamily: 'Raleway-Bold'

Source https://medium.com/@danielskripnik/how-to-add-and-remove-custom-fonts-in-react-native-b2830084b0e4

5
votes

Hello this issue waist for me more than two days with "El+Messiri" font "https://fonts.google.com/specimen/El+Messiri"

i was doing every think write :

  1. Put your font files in projectfolder/android/app/src/main/assets/fonts/ElMessiri-Regular.ttf
  2. Remember to recompile which is: react-native run-android And then

  3. you can use fontFamily: 'ElMessiri-Regular' in your style.

    but the fault was that am using fontWeight : 'bold' after fontFamily: 'ElMessiri-Regular' and the fontWeight was overiding the fontFamily because "El+Messiri" font has his own fontFamily bold wich is "ElMessiri-Bold"

1
votes

This feature has yet to be implemented. See the relevant issue on github here.

1
votes

For those facing problems with iOS only - which sometimes does not recognize the fontFamily name correctly:

The only solution that solved my problem was to log all the fonts to find out correct naming

(make sure you do the steps below only after adding the assets/fonts and running the react-native link):

Anyway, to log them, open the appName.xcworkspace file with xcode and then edit AppDelegate.m putting this lines at the end of the didFinishLaunchingWithOptions method (and before the return statement):

for (NSString* family in [UIFont familyNames])
  {
    NSLog(@"%@", family);
    for (NSString* name in [UIFont fontNamesForFamilyName: family])
    {
      NSLog(@" %@", name);
    }
  }

So, when you run the app (from xcode) it outputs something like this:

Output print screen from Xcode logs

This way, I can use the fontFamily Barow-Light or Zapfino inside my react-native styles

Hope it helped!