Support: Fontburst
On this page, “iOS” means both iOS and iPadOS, version 18.0 or higher.
Which scripts are covered by the fonts shown by the Fontburst app?
Currently Fontburst shows fonts for Adlam, Arabic, Armenian, Bangla, Braille, Canadian Syllabics, Cherokee, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Cyrillic, Deseret, Devanagari, Ethiopic, Georgian, Grantha, Greek, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Hebrew, Japanese, Kannada, Khmer, Korean, Lao, Latin, Malayalam, Meetei Mayek, Myanmar, N’Ko, Odia, Ol Chiki, Runic, Shavian, Sinhala, Syriac, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Tibetan, Tifinagh, Vai, and Yi. Yes, these all are scripts that people use or have used – in fact, there are a lot more.
How many fonts are there for each script?
That varies widely. Numbers here are for font families (which often have several styles) and rounded. Latin gets the most: 320. Cyillic: 160. Greek: 90. You see the European Union in action here. Japanese: 50. There’s some double-counting here, because Chinese fonts often come in separate simplified and traditional flavors, and sometimes both also support Japanese. Arabic: 40. Chinese (both simplified and traditional), Devanagari, Thai: above 20. Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Hebrew, Kannada, Korean: at least 10. All others are in the single digits.
Does the Fontburst app show all fonts that Apple provides?
The Fontburst app focuses on fonts that can be used to create content in documents and that support human languages based on the Unicode Standard. This excludes a few groups:
- Apple’s font family “San Francisco” with all its variations.
- “Fallback” fonts that iOS uses to show text in less commonly used scripts that you might receive, say, in Messages, but that Apple does not intend for use in documents.
- Fonts that Apple intends only for rendering documents that already use them, not for creating new documents.
- Fonts that only provide ornaments or math symbols.
- Fonts that don’t follow the Unicode Standard, for example, by rendering Latin text as ornamental symbols.
Can’t I download the fonts that Apple provides without the Fontburst app?
If you know the name of the font you need, head over to the Fonts section of the Settings app and download it. If however you first need to find out which font meets your needs, the Fontburst app makes that a lot easier. Or maybe you just enjoy looking at a large variety of beautiful fonts!
Do I have to pay for the fonts?
No, Apple provides them for all its users; they are licensed to you through the iOS software license. You pay a small amount for the Fontburst app because it makes it much nicer to discover these fonts.
