Change Notes Font On iPhone/iPod touch
I really, really detest the Market Felt typeface used in the Notes application in the iPod touch and iPhone. It is hard to read, hard to edit points into, and looks plain childish.
Fortunately, I stumbled upon a way to easily have your notes displayed with Arial Helvetica. And, no, you do not need FontSwap, jailbreaking or any complicated deep system maneuvering. All you need is right there in the iPhone OS.
For this walkthrough I am using a second-generation iPod touch with firmware version 2.1.1 loaded. This also works with the iPhone.
- In the Home Screen, tap on Settings.
- Tap on General, followed by Keyboard (it is near the bottom of the page).
- Tap on International Keyboards.
- Scroll down to the end of the page and tap on Chinese (Simplified).
- In the page that comes up, you will see two settings, Handwriting and Pinyin. Turn both settings on.
- Go back to the Notes application. Create a new note or tap on an existing note to open it. If you are creating a new note, write a word or two so that you can easily verify that the typeface changes.
- Tap in the note area to bring up the on-screen keyboard. Tap on the button to the left of the space bar, the one with an icon of a globe. The keyboard layout will change to one meant for Chinese handwriting recognition input. Don’t worry; just pay attention to the next step.
- On the left of the input area, you will see four rows of buttons. The first button at the top is the Backspace. The second button below it is what we are interested in. For those of you who do not understand Chinese, the button says ‘Space’.
- Tap on this button. The typeface of your note will change from Marker Felt to Arial Helvetica! But do read on! The next step is very important.
- Tap the globe button twice, or if you have many input languages set up, tap it till the space bar flashes the words ‘English (US)’ (or the name of your native language). Your input language is now back to default, and you can continue to edit your note. Even if you close your note, the typeface will remain as Arial. That’s it!
Unfortunately, you will have to repeat the last few steps (7-10) for each new note you create, but this method does keep you from having to modify core iPhone files.
Care to know what just happened?
There are two ways to input Chinese characters on a computer, either by handwriting recognition or by a method known as Pinyin, in which a user spells out the phonetic pronunciation of Chinese words with the Latin alphabet on a standard keyboard. Each resulting Chinese character is then encoded—popularly with an encoding method called Unicode—into a document. This goes for the input of any other non-Western language as well.
Encoding non-Latin characters into a document requires a compatible font. Luckily for us, Market Felt is not a Unicode font. So, by picking a non-Latin input method, we are forcing the input engine to switch to a Unicode font such as Arial Helvetica so that it can display both Latin and non-Latin characters correctly. If you would like to know more about the magic that goes on in the background regarding character encoding, Wikipedia has an entry on the topic.
Note: This article has been corrected since publication.
Tweet This (5)
tony on October 28th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
My text converted to Helvetica, not Arial.
Joe on October 28th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
I didn’t get the same font as displayed in your screenshots also, but thankfully it is still more legible than the standard Notes font. It’s just a shame we can’t pick it specifically, because repeating those steps each time is a pain. At least it’s easy to convert any note after the fact using this method, so you don’t have to retype it.
flec65 on October 28th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
It’s Helvetica for me too (maybe because on my iPod touch the language is set to French?).
Thank you for this handy tip. Marker Felt is very bad indeed, even Comis Sans would be better ;-). Let’s hope that we’ll be able to choose a better font in a next version of the iPhone OS…
Craig on October 28th, 2008 at 7:49 pm
It’s Helvetica in his screenshots too.
Edmund on October 28th, 2008 at 8:05 pm
For the love of god, there’s no Arial on the iPhone, it’s Helvetica. Macs always come with Helvetica and not Arial, why wouldn’t the iPhone be the same?
Edmund.
Geoffrey on October 28th, 2008 at 8:17 pm
What is so bad about Helvetica? Personally, I’m more of a fan of Comic Sans to be honest. But seriosuly, I’m just going to buy the new touch Blackberry.
Clayton Lai on October 28th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
It’s Helvetica? My bad.
Matt J on October 29th, 2008 at 3:39 am
Unfortunately, Macs come with Arial now, as do iPhones. But Apple do not use Arial anywhere in the iPhone interface, it’s just used when requested in Safari, although some developers seem to be using it in their applications.
Please tell me you’re joking.
Art Kavanagh on November 7th, 2009 at 5:07 am
Matt J: So that’s why they included Arial on the iPhone/Touch, I thought it was odd. I think they’re being way too accommodating of web developers’ often silly choices. I’ve disabled Verdana on my Mac because so many sites insist on it. I got really fed up looking at it. (I’m tempted to do likewise on my Windows box but I don’t use that so much for browsing.)
Galley on October 29th, 2008 at 7:28 am
I, for one, like Marker Felt.
Eamonn Fitzgerald on October 29th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
“Unfortunately, you will have to repeat the last few steps (7-10) for each new note you create…” So, what is the point of this “tip”, then? All that work to change the font in one short note! And then it’s back to the default Market Felt when you decide to write the next note. This is a supreme example of the kind of nonsense one can come up with if there’s nothing better to do. But most of us do not have the time to take “the last few steps (7-10)” to see one note in Helvetica! We’d rather pour another glass of wine and chill to “My Back Pages” being sung by Bob Dylan: “A self-ordained professor’s tongue / Too serious to fool / Spouted out that liberty / Is just equality in school / ‘Equality,’ I spoke the word / As if a wedding vow. / Ah, but I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.”
Clayton Lai on October 29th, 2008 at 8:13 pm
I can do step #7-10 in two seconds. What’s your point?
charlie on November 1st, 2008 at 11:02 pm
This work just fine for me even with a few distractions. Is there a way to increase the font size?
Clayton Lai on November 2nd, 2008 at 6:27 am
Unfortunately, no.
Mark on November 8th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
I thought I was the only one who was that anal about the font not being more readible:) Thank you for a nice solution!
Luke on January 21st, 2009 at 10:31 am
There is a tool that can do all this without any configuration changes.
Luke on January 21st, 2009 at 10:32 am
Hmmm, tried to post a url and it discarded my comment. So you can go google digg iphone notes manager.
brefney on April 8th, 2009 at 7:27 pm
thanks, josh! this was a big help!
David R on May 2nd, 2009 at 12:49 am
They should make it easier to change the fonts.using markerfelt for a default font for notes was stupid.
Rio D on May 8th, 2009 at 10:11 am
Thanks a lot for the help!! I was completely annoyed with Marker Felt, and needed an easy way to change the font, because it was really horrible! So thanks and keep on doing stuff like this, cause it helps!
tkc on June 12th, 2009 at 10:53 pm
Thank you!!!!!!!! You have really done a great service to humanity here.
220 on July 11th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
This doesn’t work for previously typed notes. However, Apple’s Notes can be created and edited in the Mail application. Notes are stored under the Reminders tab. Double click on one to edit it like any other text document.
Underlining works, however bold and italicize do not. The displayable faces seem to be limited as well, but Hoefler Text 12 and American Typewriter 14 work well.
Make sure that iTunes is set to replace Notes. Select your ipod, then the Info tab, scroll to the bottom and under Avanced, click on the Notes checkbox and Sync. You will have to perform this action everytime you sync; a safety feature as this will replace all of the Notes on your iPod with the Notes in Mail, so back them up first. I suggest emailing them to the account you use on Mail through Notes, then copy/paste into a new Note in Mail.
One caveat, changing the font size, and in some cases the face, will not change the notepad lines; a minor annoyance.
robin on September 3rd, 2009 at 11:47 am
Thank you very much. Worked out very well…!
jahlada on September 9th, 2009 at 6:28 am
Fantastic help, thanks. I hated the font too and a quick google search and here I am with a nice legible font.
Personally I only ever use one note and add to it and delete things when I have done them so repeating the steps is not an issue.
Ulysses on September 21st, 2009 at 5:03 pm
First of all, thank you Josh Pigford for posting this workaround. Second of all, some people on this page should chill and redirect their aggression towards Apple! Let’s look for a way to tell Apple to simply add a long-needed fix in their next OS release that places a Notes preference tab in Settings. Any ideas on how to get Apple’s ear – I mean, seriously get Apple’s ear?
Steve on October 5th, 2009 at 10:34 am
Thank you very much!! I use notes a lot but yes the font was awful, especially for non-alpha characters.
As I was reading down your steps I must admit I was sceptical – Chinese input – but hey bingo worked a treat! Thanks Josh.
Scott on October 12th, 2009 at 9:05 am
Thanks for the workaround! I just got my iTouch and really didn’t care for the default font in Notes as I have started to use it extensively in my job as an RN. Did a Google search and found this page. One tip I discovered: if you have saved notes in the old font (Marker Felt), you can place the curser at the beginning of the note, go through the above process, and the entire note will instantly change to Helvitica. No need to re-type the entire note. Excellent tip. Again thx.
Sarah on October 23rd, 2009 at 10:37 am
Wow, this is pretty hilarious and involved. Good work. Now if only apple would use a nice grown-up font.
Jen on October 25th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
I, too, was skeptical when I saw Chinese encoding was involved, but this is awesome.
I HATE that crappy note font and am so glad to be rid of it.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!
Susana on November 3rd, 2009 at 12:10 pm
Hey! Even though you have to do this steps every time I have to write a note, I don’t care! I prefer doing it, than having to see that awful font! What the heck Apple was thinking when they chose it for this app?
And yes, i agree with Ulysses, come on! some one is sharing some very cool tips, so if you don’t need it, just don’t use it, but don’t complain about it.
Anyway, i just have to say THANKS A LOT!!!
Julie on November 9th, 2009 at 10:31 am
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!