Auto Sync & Upload Your Installed Fonts With OneDrive on Windows 10
Update April 2019: Some readers were having an issue with windows permissions when it comes to relying on junction links between two folders. I’ve made a quick Python script as an alternative to this tutorial which I would be putting up soon.
In this post, I’m going to show you how to use a single line command line script that will auto sync & upload your installed fonts with OneDrive, GoogleDrive, DropBox or any other online service on Windows 10.
Pre-requisites:
- You have installed and logged in to OneDrive (or another cloud service) on your system with enough free space in it.
- You’re using a Windows Machine (I’m writing this for Windows 10)
- You have the ability to forgive my grammatical errors in putting this tutorial.
🚨 Caution: You’re going to be working with CMD commands and junction links. If you don’t have experience working with them, I’d highly recommend that you read up on both of them by clicking here and here. If you don’t know what you’re doing, things could get quite messy real soon, so please do your homework before trying this yourself. I came across many sync issues in trying trying this out, and I am going to constantly update this article with fixes to the snippets to resolve any issue that comes up for me. Please look them up and help me fix the code as well?
👩🚀 TLDR: Jump To Snippet
Being a design enthusiast, you might constantly be looking for inspiration online, and free commercial use fonts you could possibly use for your my next project.
The problem? Each time you switch your system or format your existing one, you’ve to start the search for free fonts all over again. Apps like FontBase (fontba.se) are brilliant to keep a track on the fonts you have installed but doesn’t give us the option of actually backing them up.
My assumption here is that you’ve already hustled through a bunch of sites to carefully download and install favourite fonts, and just need to find a mindless (automated) way to back them up.
Your Options:
I’ve always hated how the only way to make backups of the fonts I’ve installed, is by manually dragging the folders/files to OneDrive each time I install something new. A quick Google search will tell you that OneDrive does have automatic folder syncing, but it doesn’t let you choose a custom folder you’d like to backup apart from the ones it’s already listed. Here are the folders it would let you backup automatically if you’re interested in knowing:
This wouldn’t let us specify any other folder we’d like to back up, though.
What are your options when it comes to backing up custom folders?
If you’re like me, this is when you start (obsessively) looking up software and tools from freeware, premium tools, to a few open source ones as well. I wasn’t too comfortable with installing new software for something this simple and was sure there must be an easy way to get this done.
⭐ What Worked For Me:
Lo and behold. Opening Command Prompt and customizing the below snippet would let you sync (any) folder into a destination folder.
mklink /j “<destination>” “<source>”It’s quite something, so please use it carefully. Deleting a file in your source folder would also delete it in the destination one.
Here’s what you got to do:
1) Find Your SkyDrive Folder:
- Open Start and Search For OneDrive
- Right Click anywhere within the window, and hit Properties
- Select Security
- Make a note of Your Directory (in notepad, perhaps?)
- Specify the backup folder within OneDrive for the code to back things into, at the end of the Path. Note: This directory should not exist in your OneDrive folder.
It should look something like this:
C:\Users\{USER_NAME}\OneDrive\AllFonts2) Find Your Fonts Folder:
- Open This PC
- Click on your Primary Windows Drive (Mostly: C Drive)
- Open Windows
- Make a note of the Fonts Directory Path.
It would open up in a fonts window, don’t worry about it, we just need to know the directory path of where the fonts are stored.
It should look something like this
C:\Windows\Fonts3) Going Commando:
- Open Command Prompt by opening start and searching for cmd.
- Create a rough code in notepad, with both directory paths you’ve made note of earlier, and modify the below snippet with both the codes you’ve copied.
mklink /d “<destination>” “<source>”In my case, this is what the snippet looks like
mklink /d “C:\Users\UserNaam\OneDrive\InstalledFonts” “C:\Windows\Fonts”Hit Enter.
If everything goes right, this is what your command prompt window should say:
Junction created for C:\Users\UserNaam\OneDrive\InstalledFonts <<===>> C:\Windows\Fonts
Here’s a link to a video
I’ve backed up about 3000 font files automatically using the above snippet, and each time I uninstall or install a new font, it would update my OneDrive folder.
You know what’s the best part? We didn’t install any additional apps. 🎉
