Font Managers and Adobe XD - Windows

[bpinnington]

XD still has such bad support for font managers in Windows, considering how good Illustrator/InDesign/After Effects handle them I am very surprised by this?

I have wanted to make the switch to XD from Illustrator for UI mockups for over a year now, but this one issue is ALL that is keeping me in AI. Having to install fonts on my system is tedious, especially when testing different fonts.

Can this please be finally put very very high on the list of very very high important things to fix?

Steps to replicate:

1) Install font manager, such as Fontbase or Nexus.

2) Activate a font, any non-system-installed font.

3) Open XD, check that it is not available,

4) rinse, repeat..

If anyone has any workarounds other than system-installing them, please let me know.

[Atul_Saini · Accepted solution]

Hi Bpinnington, thanks for using Adobe XD and sharing your feedback about using font manager with Adobe XD, we have a similar request here: - Fonts not loading from Font Managers – Adobe XD Feedback : Feature Requests & Bugs, I would request you to upvote this thread and share your comments with these details so that the team may have a better understanding of this situation.

Please update this discussion in case you need further assistance.

Thanks,

Atul_Saini

[Mukul Ishwar]

Started working with the recent 2.9.4 update of FontBase.

[adriank64589216]

It does not work currently for me with XD 23.1.32.2, FontBase 2.10.2 and Windows 10 1903 Build 18362.

The Uservoice thread has just been closed without solving the issue despite the many many comments saying it has not been resolved...

[Peter Villevoye]

Hi BPinnington 🙂

Part of the font issues have to do with the final output. Eventually, a website or app needs to use 'live' (and preferably licensed) fonts. This is totally different from all 'older' media, in which fonts are rendered into print, screens, pixels, or safely embedded inside the secure containment of a PDF – not accessible for extraction. Installing fonts manually or through font managers poses no problem to make a font available for these kinds of applications and output.

But in order to build a website or an app, or even to create a 'live' preview online, fonts have to be both technically and legally available. And software from developers like Adobe needs to adhere to agreements with major font publishers. After all, it's their creation and commercial goods we're using.

Don't think of this too lightly !

Officially using, embedding, or dynamically linking to a commercial font can be costly. Just take a look at the license prices for the Dax font:

https://www.myfonts.com/licenses?type=sku&id=638231&cl=false

Do you dare to check out the web and app version ?

So simply installing or managing a font, and letting it be freely distributed by Adobe XD for a simple online previewing, is not something font distributors like to see happening. (Fortunately, this Dax is also available through Adobe cloud fonts.)

[Oskari2]

I don't understand why font managers are out of the question. The fonts in font managers are acquired the same way as when you have them installed (at least to my understanding) (also you can just download a font illegally, install it and use it in XD so I don't see how not supporting font managers will help in this case).

Often times font managers are just a quick way to find the right font you're looking for in a project, activating it, using it, and then if you don't need it, deactivating it. Font managers just make the process easier for example with Google fonts.

I have to admit I am not knowledgeable enough in law, but how come for example Sketch supports font managers (as you can view online previews of Sketch files as well)?

[Peter Villevoye]

Let's face it, using and choosing fonts is a very barren feature in Adobe XD.

No recent fonts, no categories, only filtering from the first character while typing a font name, not a single clue or on-the-fly activation of Adobe Creative Cloud fonts... So there's a lot to be wished for in this area !! Sketch (being a Mac-only application) benefits from system-based font resources, tapping into that quite easily. Maybe a bit too easy, when it comes to preventing illegal use of a certain font. But hey, that's your call.

When implementing more font features, Adobe XD could, would, and perhaps should try to prevent a lot of messy problems, questions and complaints, about fonts not being rendered correctly or not available as textual resources in online previews and prototypes, by restricting your choice in fonts to freely available ones (e.g. the Google and Adobe distributed open source fonts), or correctly licensed cloud fonts (also from Adobe or other suppliers). But that goal is running and ruining a lot of ease-of-use in many design tools from all ages, and even centuries...

I bet supporting font managers is currently the least of Adobe's priorities in this matter.

[InnovaWEB]

That works fine for me :

Change the Root folder location to "C:/FontBase" (or C:\FontBase — not sure if it's front or backslash)

https://community.adobe.com/t5/adobe-xd/how-do-i-add-fonts-to-adobe-xd/td-p/10532170?page=1

[Gerben de Vries]

Works. Thank you !