Supported Fonts

The set of supported fonts varies between different implementations of the Java platform. For the terminology used, see the Font class description.

Support for Physical Fonts

The JRE supports TrueType and PostScript Type 1 fonts.

Physical fonts need to be installed in locations known to the Java runtime environment. The JRE looks in two locations: the lib/fonts directory within the JRE itself, and the normal font location(s) defined by the host operating system. If fonts with the same name exist in both locations, the one in the lib/fonts directory is used.

Users can add physical fonts that use a supported font technology by installing them either in the lib/fonts directory within the JRE, or by installing them in a way supported by the host operating system. The recommended location to add per-user fonts on Solaris or Linux is the $HOME/.fonts directory which is searched by the platform's libfontconfig, and which is in turn used by the JDK.

Support for Logical Fonts

Logical font names are mapped to physical fonts in implementation dependent ways. Typically one logical font name maps to several physical fonts in order to cover a large range of characters. The JRE uses font configuration files to define the mapping.

Users can add a limited number of supported TrueType and Type 1 physical fonts as fallback fonts for logical fonts used in Java 2D rendering by installing them in the lib/fonts/fallback directory within the JRE. However, this mechanism has the following restrictions:

The same fonts are used for all logical fonts.
The order in which the fonts are used cannot be defined.
AWT heavyweight components on Windows do not work.
The mechanism does not work on macOS.
The number of fonts that can be added is limited in a way that cannot be precisely specified. On Windows, no more than 200 fonts can be assumed to work, and on Linux and Solaris it could be considerably fewer, with no guaranteed minimum number.

The Lucida Fonts

The JDK and the JRE bundle several physical fonts of the "Lucida" design family. These fonts are also licensed for use in other implementations of the Java Platform. These fonts are physical fonts, but since they come with the Java SE Runtime, they don't depend on the host operating system. Using them provides the benefit of a consistent look and feel across platforms and implementations for a large set of languages.

There are three different type families: "Lucida Sans", "Lucida Sans Typewriter", and "Lucida Bright". Each family has plain, bold, italic, and bold-italic styles. Not all of these are present in all Java SE implementations. For example, the default download bundle of the JRE for Windows only contains the Lucida Sans plain font (but note that application developers can include all Lucida fonts with a Java runtime environment that they redistribute with an application).

The following table shows which Unicode character blocks are covered by each font family:

Unicode Block	Lucida Sans	Lucida Sans Typewriter	Lucida Bright
Basic Latin	yes	yes	yes
Latin-1 Supplement	yes	yes	yes
Latin Extended-A	yes	yes	yes
Latin Extended-B	partial	partial	partial
IPA Extensions	partial	no	no
Spacing Modifier Letter	partial	partial	partial
Combining Diacritical Marks	partial	no	partial
Greek	yes	yes	yes
Cyrillic	partial	partial	partial
Hebrew	yes	yes	no
Arabic	partial	partial	partial
Devanagari	yes	no	no
Thai	yes	yes	no
General Punctuation	partial	partial	partial
Superscripts and Subscripts	partial	partial	partial
Currency Symbols	partial	partial	partial
Letterlike Symbols	partial	partial	partial
Number Forms	partial	partial	no
Arrows	partial	partial	partial
Mathematical Operators	yes	partial	yes
Enclosed Alphanumerics	partial	no	no
Box Drawings	partial	partial	no
Block Elements	partial	partial	no
Geometric Shapes	partial	partial	partial
Miscellaneous Symbols	partial	partial	no
Dingbats	yes	no	no
Alphabetic Presentation Forms	partial	partial	no
Arabic Presentation Forms-A	partial	partial	partial
Arabic Presentation Forms-B	yes	yes	yes

Note that of the writing systems that are generally fully supported by the JRE, the Lucida fonts do not support Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Japanese, and Korean. (See JDK 8 and JRE 8 Supported Locales.)

The fonts are installed in the Java SE Runtime Environment's lib/fonts directory as the following files (not all of them may be present):

LucidaSansDemiBold.ttf
LucidaSansRegular.ttf
LucidaTypewriterBold.ttf
LucidaTypewriterRegular.ttf
LucidaBrightDemiBold.ttf
LucidaBrightDemiItalic.ttf
LucidaBrightItalic.ttf
LucidaBrightRegular.ttf