You Can Add New Fonts to Google Docs
Google Docs came out 18 years ago—it’s old enough to vote—but it only offers a couple dozen fonts by default. But it’s easy to add more.
The bad news is you can’t upload a TTF or OTF file and use it in Google Docs. The good news is that Google offers over 1,600 fonts, and you can add any of them to your documents and presentations. To get started, click the font dropdown. At the top you will see a button “More fonts” .
Click on it and view the full collection of Google fonts.
The left pane lists all the fonts you can add: click any font and it will be added to the list of available fonts in Google Docs. The smaller panel on the right includes all the fonts currently offered in Google Docs. Click the “X” next to any of them to remove them from the font book.
There are also several filtering options. I recommend setting scripts to “Latin” unless you need fonts that target other character sets. From there you can filter by type.
The display uses decorative fonts, such as those you use in a banner or headline for a new product. Handwriting only includes fonts that resemble human handwriting (if you’re looking for a Comic Sans replacement, there’s one). All monospace fonts have the same width, which is useful in many cases. And then there’s the classic serif / sans-serif division; Choose a category based on how much you like decorative lines on the ends of your letters.
You can add as many fonts to your list as you like. Problem: It can be a little difficult to find good ones.
Some Easy Ways to View Google Fonts
The font viewing interface in Google Docs is not very good, to put it mildly. The preview is not very large and there are not many filters. That’s why I recommend you go to fonts.google.com instead.
Each font has an expanded preview—the default size is 40 pixels, but you can increase the size to see more detail. You can enter whatever you want for the preview. There are also additional filtering options. Once you find one you like, you can go back to Google Docs and find the ones you like so you can add them.
If you’d prefer to have this kind of interface built into Google Docs, there’s Extensis Fonts .
This free extension adds a sidebar that lets you try out fonts on the fly. Just highlight the text and choose a font. Note that any font you try this way will be added to your font list in Google Docs—you may have to clear it later.