• March 28, 2024, 10:37 AM
• Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
Did you miss your activation email?
Perusing The Shelves

Author Topic: Kindle eReaders: How to use custom fonts for all Kindle eBooks  (Read 7782 times)

Offline jessadia


There’s a simple trick to change the default font type to use custom fonts across all ebooks for Kindle devices (except the Kindle Touch and Kindle Fire). You can customize line spacing, margins, and justification as well. And this includes both DRM protected ebooks and ebooks without DRM.
The Kindle does not need to be jailbreaked or hacked in any way. All that is required to make font and layout changes is a free plugin for Calibre called Kindle Collections, some font files, and a few minutes to set everything up.


Here’s how to use custom fonts on the Kindle:

1. Turn on your Kindle and go to the Homescreen (very important). Now plug your Kindle into your computer with the USB cable. You need to create a folder called fonts on the root of the Kindle, the top level of the Kindle drive, e.g. Kindle (F:).

2. Place OTF and TTF fonts of your choice into the folder (I’m using DroidSerif for this test).
There must be four font files for each font type (one for Regular, Bold, Italic, and BoldItalic) and the names have to be very specific so you’ll need to make some changes. At the end of each font’s name you have to add the style. Here are the examples for DroidSerif:
•   DroidSerif-Regular.ttf
•   DroidSerif-Bold.ttf
•   DroidSerif-Italic.ttf
•   DroidSerif-BoldItalic.ttf
You must add the dash – and Regular, Bold, etc. Underscores won’t work and the names have to be exactly as shown. If your font doesn’t have all four styles you can probably just make a copy of one or use a different font and change the name accordingly.

3. Install Calibre if you don’t already have it.

4. Open Calibre and click the arrow next to the Preferences button and select Get plugins.

5. Scroll down to the Kindle Collections plugin and install it.

6. Calibre will automatically detect the Kindle (it should still be plugged into your computer) and then a Kindle Collections icon will appear on the top menu bar (provided you selected to add it there when installing it).

7. Select Kindle Collections and then Modify Kindle Settings.

8. A window will open with all the settings for modifying font and layout. The font types you added to the folder will show up on the list. Make the changes you want and make sure to check the box next to the selections to activate them and then save. A lot of times I get an error message after saving the first time and have to go through and do it again.

9. Once the changes have been successfully made, the plugin will tell you to Eject and Restart your Kindle. Do so. Here’s how to restart the Kindle: from the homescreen, hit Menu > Settings > Menu > Restart. It will take a couple minutes to reboot.

10. Now open a book and see if it worked. For me, it always shows the Kindle’s sans serif font by default. To get to the new font I always have to open the font menu and change to alt. If you go back and change to std, it will reset the menu and font to the original Kindle fonts and you’ll have to use the plugin to do steps 6-10 again to get back to the custom font.


*I kind of cheated with this one  :-[ and took it from the blog found here: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login. I would recommend bookmarking the site as it is full of wonderful information regarding different types of eReaders and even lists special promotions and codes from sites like Kobo and Amazon.
« Last Edit: January 09, 2012, 12:57 PM by jessadia »
 
The following users thanked this post: blum

Advertisement


Offline bookreader1

Re: Kindle eReaders: How to use custom fonts for all Kindle eBooks
« Reply #1 on: January 09, 2012, 12:23 PM »
That was very interesting and I plan to do that with my old kindle.  Bummer it won't work on the Kindle touch which is what I mainly use.  Appreciate these awesome instructions -they seem to be very easy to follow especially for the computer challenged like me.
 

Tags:
 

Related Topics

  Subject / Started by Replies Last post
2 Replies
5829 Views
Last post May 25, 2013, 03:41 PM
by Shorty
1 Replies
5291 Views
Last post September 03, 2012, 10:26 PM
by Shorty
60 Replies
12011 Views
Last post November 14, 2012, 03:41 AM
by WebUser
8 Replies
6964 Views
Last post January 21, 2014, 07:15 PM
by Shorty
10 Replies
3877 Views
Last post February 28, 2014, 04:52 PM
by ereaderuser