Adding new fonts to Windows 10 is a quick way to customize your PC and your documents, and it is easy to do. Your newly installed fonts will be available in Microsoft Office applications like Microsoft Word as well as other Windows applications, including Adobe Photoshop.
There are thousands of different fonts available on the internet. Google offers a large number of fonts for free, and there are other sites, like fonts.com, that offer both free and premium fonts. Most fonts come packaged as either a RAR file or a ZIP file containing the font files themselves.
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How to Install a Font in File Explorer
You need to navigate to your downloads folder after you download a font package you want to install. You can extract the fonts from the archive into a folder, or just install them directly from the archive by double-clicking on them. Either works.
To extract the fonts from the archive, right-click on the archive file, then click “Extract All.”
Note: “Extract All” just uses File Explorer, which is the default in Windows 10, to extract the ZIP file. If you use another program, like 7-Zip or WinRAR, those will work as well.
Click “Extract” in the new window that pops up. You should probably leave the path alone — by default, it just creates a new folder with the name of the archive.
Double click the fonts you want to install. Click “Install” in the window that pops up, and then click the “X” in the top-right to close the window.
Some font packages contain multiple versions of the font you downloaded, like bold or italicized variants. You can double-click these individually and hit “Install” for each one.
Alternatively, you can install them all at once. To install them simultaneously, you first need to select them all. To do so, click the first font on the list, hold the “Shift” key, and click the last font. You can also drag to select them if you want. As long as they’re all selected, it doesn’t matter how you do it. It should look like this.:
Next, right-click on the name of any of the font files. If you have multiple user accounts on your PC, you might want to click “Install for All Users.” Otherwise, just click “Install.”
If you already installed some of the fonts, you’ll get a popup warning you about it. Click “Yes” and let it proceed.
Another window will indicate the progress of the installation. Once it disappears, your fonts are installed and ready for use.
How to Install a Font with the Fonts Menu
To install a font through the fonts menu, click Start, type “fonts” in the search bar, and then hit Enter. You can also navigate there by going to Settings > Personalization > Fonts.
Navigate to your Downloads folder, right-click the font archive file, and click “Extract All.”
Click “Extract” in the new window. You should leave the extraction folder name alone unless you want it somewhere specific. The folder name will have the same name as the archive file.
Double click the new folder created in Downloads. There will probably be several font files in the folder — one for each variant of the font, like bold or italics.
Click and hold the top bar of the Settings app and drag it to the left edge of the screen to snap it to the left half. Repeat the process for the font folder, except you want to snap it to the right edge of the screen. If you’ve used the Snap feature correctly, your screen should have the Settings app on one half, and the Font folder on the other. It isn’t strictly necessary to do that, but it does make life easier.
Select all of the fonts you want to install by clicking the first font, and then holding shift and clicking the last font on the list. You can also drag to select if you prefer that. Click, hold, and drag the fonts to the box that says “Drag and drop to install.” Release your mouse when the “Copy” indicator appears.
Regardless of the method you use, the fonts you install on Windows 10 should be available instantly to all of the programs on your PC.
