Fonts :-)
Its funny, literally last night I was looking in settings to see if I could change the system font.
🤔 Well, I'd like a nicer font. But I think it's a lot more effort to choose and implement a new font than one might initially think.
For one, it needs to be a font that will appeal to a large portion of the userbase. Ideally, lots of feedback would have to be gathered on different fonts. If so, various mockups would have to be created so that users can get a look at how different fonts will display in the actual interface.
Secondly, it needs to support all the languages that AOSP supports. Alternatively, only select languages could be supported, and other languages could fall back to the standard AOSP font. But that feels a bit... unfair.
Thirdly, it would mean that more future work would be spent on quality assurance of the user interface, to ensure that the font displays fine in new menus, on all supported devices, and in different accessibility display and font sizes. I'm assuming that this kind of testing has already been done by Google's QA testers, using the default AOSP font. With a new font, that QA would then become the work of GrapheneOS. I have worked in QA, and know that certain fonts and font sizes will cause cutoffs for different languages – mostly because words and sentences can tend to be longer in some languages compared to the languages that developers use when they do their own testing. That ought to be tested as well.
(By the way, from using PixelOS, I can observe that it clearly uses a different font compared to AOSP. I think it's likely under a license that prevents GrapheneOS from using it, but that's a guess).
Those stipulations seem fair. If the devs said this needed to be done, I would personally take on all the work myself if it means the entire interface of my favorite OS would get a refresh lol.
Google uses Google sans (a.k.a Product Sans) on Pixels, which is their proprietary font. You can extract it or find a file online but GOS couldn't implement it unfortunately.
I'm not saying that we should try to copy Google sans, but the AOSP font just is extremely bland and outdated compared to modern widely-used ROMs.
I think this issue in the GrapheneOS branding-extra repository explains a lot: https://github.com/GrapheneOS/branding-extra/issues/3.
owend30 Picking standard fonts for an OS can go terrible wrong. Like when Samsung activated the Choco Cooky font (maybe 10-12 years ago?) as standard on their phones. I hated that font sooo much and it has been featured in a huge number of memes from that area and forward. As a result, that font has been ever present on the internet...
If the OS font is ever to be changed, please use a sober font, with small changes from today.
Here it is explained and viewed how it's possible to change fonts on a Samsung phone:
https://www.sammobile.com/news/one-ui-6-new-font-not-looking-good-switch-back-old-one/
Maybe via systemless changes thru Shizuku or other method it can be accomplished?
I would gladly utilize an alternative font.. 😔
Can we build an OTA update with the font and sideload it?
peterorparker Can we build an OTA update with the font and sideload it?
To be sideloaded rather than rejected, an OTA image must be signed by the same key as the key that signed the currently installed system image. So if a device is running an official GrapheneOS release then it will accept only official GrapheneOS releases. To switch system-image signers it is necessary to re-flash the device.