iMessage custom fonts

Historically, I’ve been one of the earlier adopters of new operating systems on iOS. This means getting access to less-than-stable betas and sometimes having apps crash mid-use. However, releases seem to have grown more stable as Apple’s developer ecosystem has evolved.

For my Android readers and those who aren’t up to date with everything that came out of WWDC, you might be surprised to hear that iOS will finally support custom icons, similar to what Android’s had for years. This announcement was met with mixed reception (design Twitter was not happy about it, but to be fair there are mant things they aren’t happy about). If you interact with almost any high schooler these days who has an iPhone you’ll quickly realize custom icon sets are standard fare. Supporting this functionality out of the box rather than having to hack a workaround with shortcuts makes perfect sense.

This got me thinking about other things people might want to customize… like fonts. What if iOS users could set custom fonts that would show up not only on their devices but also on other ones when using apps like iMessage?

Apart from the mob of designers with pitchforks who would lose their minds if this existed, I don’t think this is the worst idea in the world. Aesthetically it’d be a bit odd and on a product level, it’d be an enormous departure for Apple, which has historically had a strong point of view on the look and feel of their products. However, with iOS 18 all of that seems subject to change.

Have a friend who has already started personalizing their phone with custom icons on iOS 18? Send them this newsletter. https://sorens.beehiiv.com/