How to Install ALL Google Fonts on macOS

A simple guide to install the entire Google Fonts library on macOS

Google Fonts is a collection of free licensed font families. It has hundreds of fonts freely used for personal and commercial purposes. It is popular mostly among web developers and designers.

One time I want to use the same font from my web to my vector design. I can just install the desired fonts and use them on macOS. But what if I want to experiment with other fonts?

Installing the fonts one by one is not really a good idea. Google doesn’t provide an easy-to-use installer either. So, in this tutorial, I’ll show you how easy it is to install all Google Fonts on your macOS. Not just that, I’ll also show you how to update the library so you’ll have an up-to-date collection.

Installing Google Fonts

In this section, I’ll show you how to fresh install all Google Fonts on macOS. After you finish this, you’ll be able to use the Fonts in any application.

First, open the Terminal app. It’s located at /Applications/Utilities/Terminal.app. After a Terminal window appears, copy and paste the following snippet, then press enter.

cd ~/Library/Fonts/

This will change your working directory to ~/Library/Fonts. This is the default installation path for user fonts on macOS.

The next step is to download all Google Fonts git repository. Copy and paste the following snippet to your terminal window, then press enter.

git clone https://github.com/google/fonts.git google-fonts

This will create a new directory named google-fonts. This is where all Google Fonts will be stored.

The process may take a while, by the time this article is written, the total file size is around 1.6 GB. So be patient waiting.

After the git clone process is finished, open the Font Book app. Open the User section and you’ll see all Google Fonts are indexed there. That means the installation is finished successfully, now you can use the fonts in any macOS app.

Updating Google Fonts

If in the future Google adds new fonts, you can just update the git repository. Open the Terminal app again. Copy and paste the following snippet, then press enter.

cd ~/Library/Fonts/google-fonts/

This will change your working directory to the installed Google Fonts path from the previous section. To update the font collection, simply pull the git repository from the server. To do that, just type the following snippet.

git pull

The process won’t take long, because it’ll only download the new fonts, not re-download entire packages. After the process is finished, you can see the updated fonts from the Font Book app.

Removing All Google Fonts

In case for some reason, you want to remove all installed Google Fonts, simply open the Terminal app, copy and paste the following snippet, then press enter.

rm -rf ~/Library/Fonts/google-fonts/

This command will remove all installed Google Fonts from your macOS. The Font Book should be returned to the state like before you install Google Fonts.

Video Tutorial

I made a video to visualize how to do what you just read in case you want to verify the processes.

Alternatively, I also made a video tutorial on how to install all Google Fonts without a terminal.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask!

Conclusion

That’s all I can write for today. Hope this simple tutorial is helpful. Thank you for reading!

References