Download and register fonts in R from multiple sources: Bunny Fonts
(GDPR-compliant CDN), local files, direct URLs, or custom file-based
providers. Fonts are cached on first use and registered via sysfonts
so they work immediately with showtext and ggplot2.
# From r-universe
install.packages("AddFonts", repos = "https://gnoblet.r-universe.dev")
Requires woff2 command-line tool to convert fonts:
Click to see installation instructions
# Debian/Ubuntu
sudo apt install woff2
# Fedora/RHEL
sudo dnf install woff2-tools
# Arch Linux
sudo pacman -S woff2
# macOS
brew install woff2
# Windows or else
# Compile from: https://github.com/google/woff2
To add a font to R, simply call add_font() with the font family name
retrieved from the Bunny Fonts website. For
example, to add the “Oswald” font:
library(AddFonts)
# Download and register Oswald font
add_font("oswald")
#> âś” Converted '/home/gnoblet/.cache/AddFonts/bunny-oswald-latin-400-normal.woff2' to TTF: '/home/gnoblet/.cache/AddFonts/bunny-oswald-latin-400-normal.ttf'
#> âś” Downloaded variant: 'bunny-oswald-latin-400-normal.ttf'
#> âś” Converted '/home/gnoblet/.cache/AddFonts/bunny-oswald-latin-700-normal.woff2' to TTF: '/home/gnoblet/.cache/AddFonts/bunny-oswald-latin-700-normal.ttf'
#> âś” Downloaded variant: 'bunny-oswald-latin-700-normal.ttf'
#> âś” Font "oswald" registered and added to cache.
The preview_font() function plots all downloaded and registered
variants of a font family in one go. Once you have picked a font, for
instance “Merriweather”, calling the preview_font() function will show
you all its variants, and “Merriweather” has 4: regular, bold, italic,
and bold-italic.
library(AddFonts)
preview_font("merriweather", regular.wt = 400, bold.wt = 700)
Once fonts are registered, they can be used in ggplot2 via showtext.
Here we download three fonts and display them in a plot:
library(AddFonts)
library(showtext)
library(ggplot2)
fonts <- c("oswald", "merriweather", "playfair-display")
for (font in fonts) {
add_font(font)
}
showtext_auto()
font_data <- data.frame(
x = 0.5,
y = seq(0.75, 0.25, length.out = length(fonts)),
label = paste(tools::toTitleCase(gsub("-", " ", fonts)), "Font"),
family = fonts,
size = c(9, 8, 8)
)
ggplot(
font_data,
aes(x = x, y = y, label = label, family = family, size = size)
) +
geom_text(hjust = 0.5) +
scale_size_identity() +
xlim(0, 1) +
ylim(0, 1) +
theme_void()
Fonts are stored in a user-level cache directory. Use these functions to inspect or clear the cache if you need to free disk space or force a re-download.
# Show cache location
get_cache_dir()
# Remove a specific font
cache_clean(families = c("oswald"))
# Clear everything
cache_clean(reset = TRUE)
add_font() supports several font sources via the provider argument.
The default provider. Supply the font family name as it appears on fonts.bunny.net:
add_font("oswald")
Pass absolute paths to TTF or OTF files already on disk:
add_font(
"my-font",
provider = "file",
variants = list(
regular = "/path/to/MyFont-Regular.ttf",
bold = "/path/to/MyFont-Bold.ttf"
)
)
Download from any URL — no provider account needed:
add_font(
"my-font",
provider = "url",
variants = list(
regular = "https://example.com/fonts/MyFont-Regular.ttf"
)
)
Use FontProviderFile() for CDN providers that serve static font files
(e.g. Bye Bye Binary):
bbb <- FontProviderFile(
source = "bbb",
base_url = "https://bye.bye.binary.com/fonts/{family}/{filename}.ttf"
)
add_font(
"alpaga",
provider = bbb,
variants = list(regular = "Alpaga-Regular", bold = "Alpaga-Bold")
)
Bunny Fonts is the default provider because it mirrors most of Google Fonts with no tracking and no data collection — important for EU users and privacy-conscious projects. It has a fast global CDN and is free and open-source.
For other font sources, see the Providers section above.
add_font() follows the same three steps for every provider:
sysfonts requires TTF format)sysfonts::font_add() so the font is available
in all graphics devices via showtext
In the background, S7 classes manage provider metadata and cache entries.
GPL (>= 3) — see LICENSE