How to deal with custom fonts in Swift and SwiftUI

Custom fonts make your app more unique. There is more value when it’s also accessibility-ready by supporting scaling fonts. Want to know how to add custom fonts to your project?

You should begin with finding and downloading your favorite fonts. Then you can start adding them to your project.

1) Copy custom fonts to your project

You can easily drag and drop your fonts to a specific folder. Make sure you added files to the correct project.

2) Add fonts to info.plist

Now, we need to add our new fonts to the project info.plist file. All fonts name and styles should be added. The file should look something like this:

3) Prepare fonts and style enums for all new fonts

We are ready to prepare an easy font factory to manage our new fonts. Create a class for that. You can specify the style and font size of your app. Here’s an example of enums for that:

enum CustomFonts: String {
    case lato = "Lato"
    case openSans = "OpenSans"
    case oswald = "Oswald"
    case roboto = "Roboto"
    case tiltPrism = "TiltPrism"
}

enum CustomFontStyle: String {
    case bold = "-Bold"
    case light = "-Light"
    case medium = "-Medium"
    case regular = "-Regular"
    case semiBold = "-SemiBold"
    case thin = "-Thin"
}

enum CustomFontSize: CGFloat {
    case h0 = 36.0
    case h1 = 32.0
    case h2 = 20.0
    case h3 = 16.0
    case h4 = 8.0
}

4) Prepare UIFonts extension

Static func in UIFonts helps us to deal with new fonts faster. We have all new fonts on hand. Add this static func to the extension:

import UIKit

extension UIFont {
    
    /// Choose your font to set up
    /// - Parameters:
    ///   - font: Choose one of your font
    ///   - style: Make sure the style is available
    ///   - size: Use prepared sizes for your app
    ///   - isScaled: Check if your app accessibility prepared
    /// - Returns: UIFont ready to show
    static func customFont(
        font: CustomFonts,
        style: CustomFontStyle,
        size: CustomFontSize,
        isScaled: Bool = true) -> UIFont {
            
            let fontName: String = font.rawValue + style.rawValue
            
            guard let font = UIFont(name: fontName, size: size.rawValue) else {
                debugPrint("Font can't be loaded")
                return UIFont.systemFont(ofSize: size.rawValue)
            }
            
            return isScaled ? UIFontMetrics.default.scaledFont(for: font) : font
        }
}

Now you can easily use your new fonts in your project, like that:

5) Customaize it for SwiftUI

SwiftUI supports dynamic type by default and is multi-line by default. So if you add Text("Some text") to your view, you’re done. You can add the extension for Fonts like that:

import SwiftUI

extension Font {
    
    /// Choose your font to set up
    /// - Parameters:
    ///   - font: Choose one of your font
    ///   - style: Make sure the style is available
    ///   - size: Use prepared sizes for your app
    ///   - isScaled: Check if your app accessibility prepared
    /// - Returns: Font ready to show
    static func customFont(
        font: CustomFonts,
        style: CustomFontStyle,
        size: CustomFontSize,
        isScaled: Bool = true) -> Font {
            
            let fontName: String = font.rawValue + style.rawValue
            
            return Font.custom(fontName, size: size.rawValue)
        }
}

then use it:

I hope this method makes your “fonts world” easier to deal with :)
Cheers!