How to install multiple ttf fonts for system-wide usage?

Question

I had "WinFonts" folder in home directory including many true type fonts (.ttf) which I would like to install to be applied for use widely across Ubuntu system and apps. I need help guiding me to make this step?

Solution

Installing TTF fonts system wide it's not difficult. You just need to create a directory inside /usr/share/fonts/truetype/, put there your *.ttf fonts and then update system font cache with fc-cache -fv (With the options -f for Force re-generation of cache files and -v for Verbose).

Step by step:

1. Create your custom fonts directory (let's call it customfonts):

   sudo mkdir /usr/share/fonts/truetype/customfonts

2. Copy your *.ttffonts there:

   sudo cp ~/myfonts/*.ttf /usr/share/fonts/truetype/customfonts/

3. Update system font cache:

   sudo fc-cache -fv

If you want to add more fonts later, just copy them to your usr/share/fonts/truetype/customfonts/ directory and update system font cache as above.

Comments

[SirSaleh]

and don't forget that extension also are case sensitive. So for example copy TTF files also.

[gerlos]

Right. To avoid this kind of annoying case problems, it may be a good idea to stick with a case convention for these files, i.e. use only lower case extensions.

[ErichBSchulz]

FYI I didn't need sudo - so perhaps try without first

[gerlos]

@ErichBSchulz this is because font cache are stored both system wide (in /var/cache/fontconfig/) and per-user (in ~/.cache/fontconfig). If you have only one user on your system both commands will work. If you have more users, you may prefer to generate the cache once for everyone, using sudo.