Display fonts by family in the font selector

Hello ONLYOFFICE team and community,

I would like to suggest an improvement to the font selector interface that would significantly enhance usability.

Current situation

Currently, the font selector displays each font style as a separate entry. For example:

  • Arial
  • Arial Bold
  • Arial Italic
  • Arial Bold Italic
  • Calibri
  • Calibri Bold
  • Calibri Italic
  • etc.

This creates a very long list that makes it difficult to:

  • Quickly find a specific font family
  • Browse through available fonts efficiently
  • Understand which fonts are actually installed
  • Access frequently used fonts quickly

Suggested improvements

1. Group fonts by family

Display fonts grouped by family, similar to how Microsoft Outlook and Google Docs handle this:

  • Display only the font family name (e.g., “Arial”, “Calibri”, “Times New Roman”)
  • On a click, display the different style available (Light, Light italic, Regular, Italic, SemiBold, …)
  • Keep the separate style buttons (Bold, Italic, Underline) for applying styles
  • The dropdown would be much shorter and easier to navigate

2. Show recently used fonts at the top

Add a “Recent Fonts” section at the top of the font selector showing the 5 most recently used font families, separated from the main list by a divider.

This pattern is used by:

  • Microsoft Word - Shows recent fonts with a clock icon
  • Google Docs - Displays recent fonts at the top
  • Adobe Creative Suite - Recent fonts section
  • Canva - Recently used fonts highlighted

Benefits

Cleaner interface - Reduces visual clutter significantly
Faster font selection - Easier to scan through families
Quick access - Recent fonts immediately available (80/20 rule: users typically rotate between a few fonts)
Industry standard - Matches user expectations from other office suites
Better UX - Especially helpful when many fonts are installed
Improved productivity - Less scrolling and searching for commonly used fonts
Consistency - Aligns with Microsoft Office and Google Workspace behavior

An example on Microsoft Office :

G’day @Max1m,
It might be helpful to support if you also provide which version of OnlyOffice you are using, and what the Operating System you are running.

I am using version 9.2.1.43 (x64 exe) on Win 11 Pro, and see something different.
And in regards to Font Family Grouping, I see;


where they are grouped.
Edit: The grouping is limited to the summarising Regular, Bold, Italic, and Bold-Italic as a family though, as those variations are accessible via the “B” and “I” buttons on the toolbar.

And in regards to recent use, I see;


which are the last 5 fonts I used, as I recall.

So, at least for me, on the version and platform I am currently using, the features you are looking for appear to be present. So, your case may be tied to a specific version/OS instance.

Hello
Here on Kubuntu, no group at all, which makes it boring to browse the font list has the system has a lot of redundant / useless fonts:


But yes, recently used fonts are on top too.

Grouping might be cool, but I see that now MSO has a “pin font” option, which is IMO great and should be the priority.

Thanks

Hi @arcqus,
It does look like you have the same Family grouping as is implemented on Windows; where the “Bold”, “Italic”, and “Bold-Italic” variants are grouped with “Regular”, at least, that is how it looks from your third screen-shot.

And your font list does look especially bloated.
Are you not allowed to remove the fonts that are unneeded? It looks like there is a lot of fonts for non-latin based alphabets there.
I Googled “Noto Sans Gujarati”, and it looks especially non-latin.

Hi @DavidRGreen,

Yes, my example was bad at first, it is more :

  • DejaVu Sans
  • DejaVu Sans Condensed
  • DejaVu Sans Light
  • DejaVu Sans Mono
  • DejaVu Serif
  • DejaVu Serif Condensed
  • etc.

And for the last 5 used, if it could be more visually indicated, it could be clearest to use.

Hi @DavidRGreen
By grouping, I expect to have a meta-name (ei : Noto) and by clicking it, getting the list of “child” fonts.

To me, it is. All these IBMxx or Notoxx fonts are useless and they are in the way. They represent at least 60% of the listed fonts. Just useless clutter

They come with the install of Kubuntu. I’m no linux sysadmin and I tend not to uninstall things I can’t figure out what the exact impact will be.
I might give it a look, but getting a “pin font” option would be great.

The font collection that Office/Word is doing in the screen-shot is clever, but to me it looks like they are doing on the basis of some specially coded rules, or an index table of “known” fonts, as the family.
What I see in the earlier screen-shot is;
Aptos shows all fonts of that family as a group as indicated in the Windows Font manager, but
Calibri Light was split from Calibri family grouping.
This inconsistency makes no sense, unless there is a special process in place.

The cascading selector for fonts, as used in Office/Word does look good, and it would be an interesting implementation. I wonder if the OO developers would take it on?

@Max1m

Are you saying that you are seeing the recently used fonts at the top of the list followed by a fine line rule as a separator, but a better indicator would be a section header like in your Office/Word screen-shot would be better?

Your DejaVu point is interesting, but I think some splitting is justified; certainly “mono” and “serif” should not be grouped with “sans”, as they are too different from each other.

@arcqus

I like the “pinned” group of fonts. It would help to keep certain fonts at a “ready to use” position instead of being bumped out due to a unique usage, or just looking at a font in context to see suitability.

Something like Pinned, then Recent, the All in the list.

Hi @DavidRGreen

I’ve made some research, and there is two points:

1. A font could have many styles

Here a screenshot from the MacOS App to manage font on the system :

As you can see, Aptos has 16 styles, Arial only 4 styles, … Here the details for Aptos :

And the details for Arial :

So, OnlyOffice, instead of Word or Google Docs, only allow to select the font, and the primary style (Italic, Bold, Bold Italic). It could be great if OnlyOffice also allow us to use the other styles.

2. A font has some properties, like the language supported

In a TTF or OTF file (font file), there is a list of supported language by the font, for example and always in Apple Font Book for Arial :

This is describred in the OTF specification here: cmap - Character To Glyph Index Mapping Table (OpenType 1.9.1) - Typography | Microsoft Learn

So from my understanding, Microsoft Word and Google Docs are matching the font language with the language of the interface or the language of the document. This is why we see all those fonts in OnlyOffice, although they are unusable for our language.