How To Add Custom Fonts To Calibre Ebook Reader For Better Readability?

Question

Changing the default typeface in Calibre's e-reader module sounds handy. Which formats and fonts work best for long reading sessions on different devices?

Jake Arnejo · Answer

To add custom fonts to the Calibre desktop app, you place your .ttf or .otf files in the Calibre resources folder (or in a subfolder within that) and then change the font in the ‘Look & feel’ section of the ebook viewer preferences. This change then affects all your eBooks. I’ve just been playing with this to improve reading my ‘Tales of Iniquity ( A collection of short erotic stories)’ eBook, and with a crisp serif font it actually makes the very stylized nature of the short prose stories even more immersive and 'deliberate' to read.

Ulysses · Answer

You can totally change the reading experience in Calibre by changing to custom fonts. It is relatively easy to do. You need to add your preferred fonts (in TTF or OTF format) to your computer. My preferred fonts for reading are ‘Literata’ for a serif font and ‘Open Sans’ for a sans-serif font.

To customize your reading experience, you can then change the Font family in Preferences → Look & Feel → Look & feel for the book viewer to the newly installed font. To fine-tune your settings, it’s also a good idea to change the size of the Font as well as the Line spacing and the Margins. I would suggest to test different combinations (e.g. Bookery 1.2 will look much better than Roboto Slab on the same) – and not to forget to apply the same settings to Headers as well.

Grady · Answer

Firstly, customizing fonts for reading within Calibre can be a very fine improvement to your reading experience. For e.g., within Google Fonts, free fonts like ‘Merriweather’ is one of my picks for the Fiction category. The downloaded fonts to be installed after a right-click in the font file. Then within Calibre’s Preferences, goto Conversion > Look & Feel. Under ‘Styling’, just paste the CSS like body { font-family: “Your Font Name” ! important; }. That would make sure the chosen font is used even when you are converting a file to read on e.g. an iPad, no? Oh, for Manga and Comics, I instead use ‘Bangers’ and ‘Comic Neue’ and they are perfect to mimic the look & feel of printed comics! Note that what’s good for, say, a long dense Fantasy novel can be suboptimal for lighter novels like Romances!

Grayson · Answer

Changing fonts within Calibre books is a huge improvement after installing a new font. In any book within the Calibre viewer (e.g. the built-in View Book), press ‘E’ to bring up the tweak menu for that book, and then in the ‘Extra CSS’ section of that menu add the line ‘font-family: “Your Font””;. You can save that as a preset too. It can also be made as a change to the Calibre viewer’s interface (in the Calibre folder, open the css folder and edit the file interface.css). I have Georgia configured as my ‘long read’ font and Montserrat as my ‘quick read’ font. Note that you need to make sure the chosen font has all the characters that you need to read your books, ie. no missing glyphs in the middle of a novel.

Uma · Answer

I had the pleasure of discovering custom fonts a few days ago while trying to alleviate eye fatigue caused by the default fonts of Calibre. The dyslexia-friendly ‘OpenDyslexic’ or clean font ‘Noto Serif’ worked fine for me. First, download the font and add it to your system as you would any other font. Then go into the viewer settings for Calibre (Ctrl+P), click on ‘Miscellaneous’ and select your custom font from the list of publisher fonts. For EPUBs, I occasionally have to add an @font-face rule with the embedded font to the CSS-file. But that’s really a drag-and-drop action within the powerful editor of Calibre. So now my e-books for the classics are set in ‘Cormorant Garamond’ and my programming books in ‘Fira Code’.

Apollo · Answer

Has anyone come across a typeface that is modeled after a physical book’s typesetting? I have played with a variety of them, but so far, ‘Literata’ comes closest to my hearts’ desire (about 11pt and 1.4 line spacing though). The feel is of gentle ink on paper without feeling too old or ‘forensic’. ‘Georgia’ is a close second to Literata for me, but the font feels more like a ‘digital native’. My advice to anyone searching for the perfect book-like font would be to write a paragraph or two from a book you know really well, and copy and paste said into a text file. Then open the file up in Calibre, and try out the many fonts available to see which one feels most like reading a ‘real’ book. I can assure you that within five fonts or so, you’ll know. Then, it’s just a matter of following the simple steps to make that font your default.

Ric Green · Answer

One thing to watch out for is the licensing terms for your fonts. Most free fonts as well as almost all paid fonts allow personal use. But when you start to convert e-books that include embedded fonts to read them on your own devices to share with others then you could be violating the license terms of the font. This is not a problem caused by Calibre but a general problem of digital rights. If you stick with open-source fonts (SIL Open Font License is one example) or paid fonts with an embedding license then you should be okay. For personal use though, just use any font you like, including 'Times New Roman' in your custom Calibre setup - no one is going to come knocking on your door.

Rona Panganiban Oruga · Answer

Note that altering the font in the Calibre viewer sometimes can cause complex books (poetry, etc, w/notes on the side) to display poorly. The original CSS typically uses fixed font sizes that are based on the sizes of specific fonts. Very wide or very narrow fonts will cause the text to overflow or create unsightly space between lines of text. This problem can be solved by going back to the publisher’s default for that particular book or by learning a miniscule amount of CSS to add in some extra margins or to make the font size larger or smaller in the viewer’s styling tab. This problem occurs but rarely, so it’s good to keep this in mind when customizing. Customization carries with it the occasional problem that must be fixed.

robert winsley · Answer

Don’t forget the display’s resolution when selecting extra fonts. A nice font on a 4K display will look awful on a 1080p laptop display. So, depending on where you read most your Calibre books, you have more choices on high-DPI displays. For lower-res screens, you should select fonts that are known to render very well with screen hinting. Google has supplied several of these already (Merriweather, Literata, Open Sans). You can test additional fonts quickly by adding them, opening a book, and switching between them very fast at the size at which you normally read. You’ll soon see which one looks best.

Mxolisi Shabalala · Answer

I try to add a font but it’s not in the list of available fonts. Most common reason for this is a broken or incomplete font file. Try opening the font file in the font viewer on your system (double click on the file and you should get a preview window). If the font opens then it’s a valid font. To add a font in the Calibre viewer preferences (press ‘P’ in the viewer) go to the ‘Styling’ tab and click on ‘Manage fonts’ button. This method is more reliable than trying to add a font in the library view. Some fonts just don’t work (variable fonts, fonts with strange encoding). Stick with standard fonts distributed as TTF or OTF files by reputable sources.

Tracy Elisarow · Answer

For Linux users, this process sometimes requires an extra step when Calibre cannot access user fonts for lack of permission. Copying .ttf files to a folder within the Calibre configuration directory (found via Preferences > Miscellaneous > Open calibre configuration directory) worked a treat. After throwing the relevant fonts into a newly created ‘fonts’ folder within this folder, a reboot of Calibre and the relevant fonts soon appeared to use. Yes, this method is somewhat labor-intensive compared to simply adding fonts the Calibre GUI way, but the resulting font storage is pure and self-contained within the Calibre eco-system. Which is great, because it’s a very clean and very portable way to ensure your e-books can always make best use of whatever fonts you have available on any given machine.

David Johnson · Answer

I am coming here to look at fonts that people recommend. The defaults are giving me eye fatigue.

How To Add Custom Fonts To Calibre Ebook Reader For Better Readability?

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