How to Add Fonts to Procreate and Create Beautiful Designs: 3 Ways

Did you know that you can add new fonts to Procreate? 

how to add fonts in procreate. Shows letters decorated in procreate

Although Procreate comes with a bunch of default fonts you can use, they’re not always the ones I would pick when creating my designs.

In this post I’ll show you how to add fonts to Procreate so that you can create beautiful designs in Procreate.

This post contains affiliate links. I only recommend things that I love. For more information, check out my disclosure policy. 

How To Find The Default Fonts in Procreate

When working within a canvas, you can see which fonts you already have in Procreate by selecting your wrench icon, then add, then add text.

Click on the “Aa” that shows up on top-right corner of your keyboard. Then you can scroll through your fonts list on the font menu that shows up on the left hand side of your screen.

Although there’s a nice variety of default fonts, including three that are shipped with Procreate (Eina, Impact, and Jack Armstrong BB), you may wish to install additional fonts that you find or purchase online.

A bonus to purchasing fonts online at a place like DesignCuts is that your designs won’t look like everyone else’s!

I love fonts and have a lot of them, so was excited to learn how to get my fonts into Procreate. There are so many beautiful fonts out there! I can’t wait to share this with you and see what you create with fonts in Procreate.

Hint: To learn how to use fonts to create really pretty artwork, I highly recommend the Skillshare class by Jennifer Nichols. This class blew my mind and I loved it so much that I took it twice!

Where to Find Fonts for Procreate

There are several websites where you can find fonts you can use in Procreate. There are free sites like dafont.com or fonts.google.com where you can find fonts for personal use.

I personally choose not to use these fonts because I only use items for which I have a commercial license or for which the creator allows commercial use. I’m not incredibly organized, so I don’t want to keep track of which fonts or assets I can use in products I create for sale in my Etsy shop or which I can use on social media. I want to be able to use all of my fonts anywhere without worrying about all that. 

Because of this, I tend to purchase my fonts. There are a few different places where I purchase fonts.

Of course, I recommend looking at the license for any fonts you find online. It’s possible to find free fonts that allow commercial use. Just be careful so you don’t get into any trouble with copyright.

Most of my fonts are from Design Cuts. You can find some great deals on fonts when fonts are included in the bundles. Also, Design Cuts offers volume discounts.

I also purchase fonts on Creative Market, Etsy, and Hungry Jpeg.

The key is to make sure that you are able to use the font for commercial purposes and without any additional rules.

For example, if someone says you have to attribute the font to them when you use it, I personally would not download that font because I don’t want to have to remember to put their name on every social media post I create.

I also would never download a font that says I can only use it on three social media profiles or anything like that. I don’t feel skilled enough to organize and track all of that.

Ok, off my soapbox…let’s get to the directions for how to add fonts to Procreate.

You can follow along with the video I created for you here:

How to Import Fonts to Procreate From The Procreate App

The first thing you want to do after finding or purchasing the font you want to add to your iPad is to download the font on your iPad.

This is easy to do if you purchase on your iPad because you just click on the download while on your iPad and it will download to your downloads folder.

If you purchase the font on your computer or phone you may need to airdrop the font to your iPad or email it to yourself to open on your iPad.

Hint: font file types that you can import into Procreate are  .otf .ttc or .ttf

Once you have the font on your iPad, you will want to look at the file in your downloads folder to see whether it is a zip file or whether it is already ready to be imported.

If it is a zip file, click on it to unzip the file. You can’t import a zipped file into Procreate.

Once the file is unzipped, open up Procreate and go to your wrench icon (actions menu), then click on add, then on add text.

On the keyboard that pops up, you’ll see import is one of the options in the top-right corner.

Click on import.

This will take you to your iCloud files. Find the font you want to add to Procreate and click on it. It will now be in Procreate.

Another way you can do this is to go into your iCloud file and find your font. You can even do this in split screen with Procreate if you want.

Choose select at the top of the screen in your files app, and then select the font or fonts you want to add to Procreate by checking the little circles next to those fonts.

Then, on the bottom of the screen, click share and choose Procreate.

This is a way to add a bunch of fonts to Procreate all at once.

I recommend using these methods only if you want the font to be exclusively used in Procreate and no other apps on your iPad.

If you use things like Affinity Designer, Pages, or any other software on your iPad, then you’ll want to use a font manager app instead.

How To Add Fonts to Procreate With A Font Manager

If you use a font manager, you’ll install your fonts to your iPad and all the programs that can use fonts rather than just to Procreate.

This is my preference because otherwise I’d have to install the font to every individual program I want to add it to. 

The font manager that I use is the iFont app which you can find here if you’re on your iPad or phone. I can’t recall if there is a cost to this app, though if there is it is probably not very much and it will be worth it if you like to use a lot of fonts.

Once you install iFont, follow the steps I provide to add fonts to your iPad.

I will admit that this can be tedious if you have a lot of fonts to add, but if you do one here and there it isn’t too big of a deal.

I have a companion Youtube video that will walk you through these steps if you prefer to see this in video format.

  1. Go into iFont and click import, which is on the upper left-hand corner of the screen. 
  2. Find the font you want to add to iFont in your iCloud folders and click on it. The font will show up on the list in iFont with an blue button with the word “install” next to it.
  3. Click install. You will see a popup window asking if you wish to download a configuration profile. Click allow.
How to Add Fonts to Procreate

4. Next a popup will come up saying Profile downloaded. Click close.

How to Add Fonts to Procreate

5. The next screen will ask you to go to settings to accept the profile. Click the button that says “open settings.”

How to add fonts to Procreate

6. This will take you to your settings and you’ll see on the left hand side of your screen a new menu has appeared that says “profile downloaded.” Click on that.

how to add fonts to Procreate

7. A pop-up will show up that says Install Profile. Click Install. Enter your iPad password. Click install again.

How to add fonts to procreate

8. On the final popup, click Done.

When you go back to iFont, you’ll see that the blue “install” button has changed to grey and says installed. It is now installed on your iPad. This means you can use this font on Procreate as well as any other app that uses fonts from your iPad.

What Makes a Good Font on Procreate?

The type of font you choose for Procreate will largely depend on what you want to do with that font.

Do you want to use a pretty script font that looks like handwriting? If so, here are my top recommendations for some of my favorite fonts that I think are really pretty:

Northwell A handwritten font

Get the Northwell Font on DesignCuts

Portfield Font

Get the Portfield font on DesignCuts

Foxtrail Font

Get the Foxtrail font on DesignCuts

how to add fonts to Procreate

Get the Born Ready Font on Creative Market

Do you want to have a very clear font that you can see on your graphic design for social media or that gives you space to decorate?

Then you’ll want a thicker, easy to read font. Here are some of my favorites for this:

Buffalo: Headline type

Get the Buffalo font on Design Cuts

Stefont

Get the Stefont font on Design Cuts

There are so many beautiful custom fonts out there. Have fun exploring. 🙂

If you want to delete fonts from Procreate, read my latest blog post.

2 thoughts on “How to Add Fonts to Procreate and Create Beautiful Designs: 3 Ways”

  1. I use iFont. I can delete a font from iFont but it still remains in the list of Procreate fonts. Is there anyway to remove the font from that list?

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