Installing Windows supplementary fonts with Features on Demand
Windows 10 and 11 ship with a large catalog of fonts, but many are not installed by default. These supplementary fonts — covering Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Arabic, Hebrew, Thai, Pan-European, and many other scripts — are available as Features on Demand (FOD) but require manual installation through Settings or PowerShell.
Fontist 3.0 now installs these fonts automatically. A single command is all it takes:
$ fontist install "Meiryo"The problem
Windows does not install all available fonts by default to save disk space. Fonts like Meiryo (Japanese), Batang (Korean), Arial Nova (Pan-European), and Plantagenet Cherokee are available as optional Features on Demand but require either navigating through Windows Settings or running PowerShell commands with admin privileges.
For CI pipelines running on Windows, this is especially inconvenient. Documents that reference these fonts fail to render correctly when the fonts are missing.
How it works
When you install a Windows FOD font through Fontist, it:
- Checks whether the required Windows capability is already installed using
Get-WindowsCapability - If not present, installs it using
Add-WindowsCapability -Online - Verifies the font files are now available in
C:\Windows\Fonts\
This uses the Formula v5 schema with a source: windows_fod resource type, which tells Fontist to handle installation through the operating system rather than downloading an archive.
Installing a font
Install any Windows FOD font by name:
$ fontist install "Meiryo"$ fontist install "Arial Nova"$ fontist install "Plantagenet Cherokee"Use --accept-all-licenses for non-interactive installs:
$ fontist install "Meiryo" --accept-all-licensesUsing in CI
On GitHub Actions Windows runners, FOD font installation works out of the box since the runners have admin privileges:
- name: Install fonts
run: gem install fontist && fontist install "Meiryo" --accept-all-licenses
shell: pwshRequirements
- Windows 10 (version 1607) or later
- Administrator privileges (required by
Add-WindowsCapability) - Internet connectivity (Windows downloads the font capability on first install)
To check which FOD font capabilities are available on your system, run:
Get-WindowsCapability -Online -Name "Language.Fonts.*"Available fonts
Fontist supports 24 Windows FOD capability groups containing 100 font families.
Click to expand the full list
Arabic Script Supplemental Fonts
- Aldhabi
- Andalus
- Arabic Typesetting
- Microsoft Uighur
- Sakkal Majalla
- Simplified Arabic
- Simplified Arabic Fixed
- Traditional Arabic
- Urdu Typesetting
Bangla Script Supplemental Fonts
- Shonar Bangla
- Vrinda
Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics Supplemental Fonts
- Euphemia
Cherokee Supplemental Fonts
- Plantagenet Cherokee
Chinese (Simplified) Supplemental Fonts
- DengXian
- FangSong
- KaiTi
- SimHei
Chinese (Traditional) Supplemental Fonts
- DFKai-SB
- MingLiU
- MingLiU_HKSCS
- PMingLiU
Devanagari Supplemental Fonts
- Aparajita
- Kokila
- Mangal
- Sanskrit Text
- Utsaah
Ethiopic Supplemental Fonts
- Nyala
Gujarati Supplemental Fonts
- Shruti
Gurmukhi Supplemental Fonts
- Raavi
Hebrew Supplemental Fonts
- Aharoni Bold
- David
- FrankRuehl
- Gisha
- Levenim MT
- Miriam
- Miriam Fixed
- Narkisim
- Rod
Japanese Supplemental Fonts
- BIZ UDGothic
- BIZ UDPGothic
- BIZ UDMincho Medium
- BIZ UDPMincho Medium
- Meiryo
- Meiryo UI
- MS Mincho
- MS PMincho
- UD Digi Kyokasho N-B
- UD Digi Kyokasho NK-B
- UD Digi Kyokasho NK-R
- UD Digi Kyokasho NP-B
- UD Digi Kyokasho NP-R
- UD Digi Kyokasho N-R
- Yu Mincho
Kannada Supplemental Fonts
- Tunga
Khmer Supplemental Fonts
- DaunPenh
- Khmer UI
- MoolBoran
Korean Supplemental Fonts
- Batang
- BatangChe
- Dotum
- DotumChe
- Gulim
- GulimChe
- Gungsuh
- GungsuhChe
Lao Supplemental Fonts
- DokChampa
- Lao UI
Malayalam Supplemental Fonts
- Kartika
Odia Supplemental Fonts
- Kalinga
Pan-European Supplemental Fonts
- Arial Nova
- Arial Nova Cond
- Georgia Pro
- Georgia Pro Cond
- Gill Sans Nova
- Gill Sans Nova Cond
- Neue Haas Grotesk Text Pro
- Rockwell Nova
- Rockwell Nova Cond
- Verdana Pro
- Verdana Pro Cond
Sinhala Supplemental Fonts
- Iskoola Pota
Syriac Supplemental Fonts
- Estrangelo Edessa
Tamil Supplemental Fonts
- Latha
- Vijaya
Telugu Supplemental Fonts
- Gautami
- Vani
Thai Supplemental Fonts
- Angsana New
- AngsanaUPC
- Browallia New
- BrowalliaUPC
- Cordia New
- CordiaUPC
- DilleniaUPC
- EucrosiaUPC
- FreesiaUPC
- IrisUPC
- JasmineUPC
- KodchiangUPC
- Leelawadee
- LilyUPC
What else is new in Fontist 3.0
Windows FOD support is part of the Fontist 3.0 release, which also includes these improvements:
Formula v5 schema. Formulas now support multiple font formats (TTF, OTF, WOFF2), variable font metadata, and import provenance. See our earlier post on Formula v5 for the full details.
Platform-aware font selection. Manifests now validate operating system compatibility before attempting to install platform-specific fonts, preventing errors when a font is only available on one platform.
Skip license prompts for already-installed fonts. If a font is already present on the current operating system, Fontist skips the license confirmation step, reducing friction when re-running installations.
Lazy formulas initialization. The formulas repository is no longer cloned at startup. Fontist defers this until the first operation that actually needs formulas, making initial startup faster.
Index rebuild speedup. The index rebuild process has been optimized for large formula repositories, reducing the time needed to refresh the font index.
Conclusion
Windows FOD font support rounds out Fontist's platform coverage. Together with macOS supplementary fonts, Google Fonts, SIL fonts, and Microsoft Office fonts, Fontist now provides automated installation of openly-licensed fonts across all major platforms.
Install Fontist and try it:
$ gem install fontist
$ fontist install "Meiryo"