How to change the Toolbar font on Android

A quick search on our beloved-yet-fickle Stack Overflow yields a handful of strategies for changing the font of the Toolbar. Top solutions include defining a custom Toolbar layout, setting text appearance at runtime, or worst of all, iterating through every Toolbar view.

What gives? I just want to change the font!

Step 0: Add the support library. Set minSdk to 16+.

dependencies {
    implementation 'com.android.support:appcompat-v7:27.1.1'

Step 1: Make a folder. Add a font to it.

Create a new directory, res/font. Add a .ttf file for the font you want to use. (Google Fonts is a sweet place to browse)

Step 2: Define a Toolbar theme.

<!-- styles.xml -->
<style name="ToolbarTheme" parent="ThemeOverlay.AppCompat.Light">
    <item name="android:fontFamily">@font/pacifico</item>
</style>

Step 3: Add a toolbar to your layout. Give it your new theme.

<!-- Use android:theme NOT style -->
<android.support.v7.widget.Toolbar
    xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:id="@+id/toolbar"
    android:layout_width="match_parent"
    android:layout_height="?attr/actionBarSize"
    android:background="@color/colorPrimary"
    android:theme="@style/ToolbarTheme"/>

Step 4: Set Toolbar in your Activity.

override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) {
    super.onCreate(savedInstanceState)
    setContentView(R.layout.activity_main)

    val toolbar = findViewById<Toolbar>(R.id.toolbar)
    setSupportActionBar(toolbar)

Step 5: Enjoy

Andrew builds apps at Livefront.