I want to preface this post with the disclaimer:

I love GrapheneOS. I think the project is incredible, and the devs have put so much work into ensuring the best possible security while not breaking a normal device experience. Thank you all so much for what you do. You're truly heroes in the age of digital surveillance.

I know fonts have been discussed before, but it seems like it's gone silent. Can we talk about fonts again? The default system font seems very... outdated (and I know I speak for many people) when compared to Google's stock ROM or Samsung's new OneUI 6. I understand wanting to focus on privacy features (that's the whole point of GOS), but changing the system font does not seem like an insurmountable task for a very skilled team of developers.

Am I missing something here? Is there a legal issue preventing updating the font? Is it a security issue? Is it just too much work? Would a new font have to be made to avoid copyright?

In previous posts, people have pointed out that if we're nitpicking fonts, it is a testament to how good GOS truly is. I wholeheartedly agree. However, I think that there is a tendency in the FOSS community to say "if it works that's all that matters," while completely overlooking the importance of making something that appeals to people from the outside as well.

Anyway, again, to the devs: thank you so much for all your hard work. I want everyone to use Graphene, and I think keeping the UI up to date is an important factor in making that a reality.

    I'd love to get others' opinions on this issue, just as GOS users

      Isn't the font in GrapheneOS just the default from AOSP and thus the same as the stock Pixel OS? Is there a difference?

      owend30 I am not a font expert, but I think it would be important for any proposed font set to be legal to use, to support at least as many languages as the current set, plus being as good at things like size scaling and variants (bold, italic). I think that might be hard.

      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).

        owend30

        I agree that the font on normal Pixel look better compared to GrapheneOS

        fid02

        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.

        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/

          Panda-na Obviously the font picked can't be something crazy, but something similar to Google Sans would look way better than the current font and please most people. I think far more people are not happy with the current font than if it was updated to something like Google Sans.

          owend30 Current fonts are ok for me. To be true, I don't much care and I have other priorities. For instance Inter applications communication scopes. So the actual priorities of the dev team suit me.

          3 months later

          Maybe via systemless changes thru Shizuku or other method it can be accomplished?
          I would gladly utilize an alternative font.. 😔

          6 days later

          Can we build an OTA update with the font and sideload it?

          • de0u replied to this.

            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.