# How to load custom fonts for inky frame?

**URL:** <https://forums.pimoroni.com/t/how-to-load-custom-fonts-for-inky-frame/27798>\
**Category:** Support\
**Created:** [May 19, 2025, 4:06pm UTC](https://forums.pimoroni.com/t/how-to-load-custom-fonts-for-inky-frame/27798 "2025-05-19T16:06:12Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![303](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forums.pimoroni.com/303/32/10469_2.png) [@303](https://forums.pimoroni.com/u/303)\
**Post date:** [May 19, 2025, 4:06pm UTC](https://forums.pimoroni.com/t/how-to-load-custom-fonts-for-inky-frame/27798/1 "2025-05-19T16:06:12Z")

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Hi, yes I’ve seen the other threads.  
I’ve exported a bdf file from fontforge. But I can’t figure out how to get picographics/inky/micropython to actually **load and use** an external font. Can anyone share how they did this with success?

Thank you!

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**Author:** ![bablokb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ee59a6/32.png) [@bablokb](https://forums.pimoroni.com/u/bablokb)\
**Post date:** [May 19, 2025, 7:18pm UTC](https://forums.pimoroni.com/t/how-to-load-custom-fonts-for-inky-frame/27798/2 "2025-05-19T19:18:51Z")

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Which other threads are you referring to? AFAIK, it is CircuitPython that supports BDF files, not MicroPython. But I might have missed something.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![303](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forums.pimoroni.com/303/32/10469_2.png) [@303](https://forums.pimoroni.com/u/303)\
**Post date:** [May 19, 2025, 7:55pm UTC](https://forums.pimoroni.com/t/how-to-load-custom-fonts-for-inky-frame/27798/3 "2025-05-19T19:55:12Z")

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> [@Picographics Library - Can you use ttf fonts or other more scalable fonts?](https://forums.pimoroni.com/t/picographics-library-can-you-use-ttf-fonts-or-other-more-scalable-fonts/20771):
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> I am using the Inky Frame 5.7 with Pico onboard. Previously I have used the 4inch verison on the raspberry pi so could just use pillow to draw everything i needed including text. When it comes to fonts in the picogrpahics library the selection seems limited with the bitmap and a few hershey ones which look blocky. Is there a way to use ttf fonts with picographics so you can get better qulaity if the files are stored on the sd card? If not is there a way to create much larger higher quality f…

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**Author:** ![bablokb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ee59a6/32.png) [@bablokb](https://forums.pimoroni.com/u/bablokb)\
**Post date:** [May 20, 2025, 6:04am UTC](https://forums.pimoroni.com/t/how-to-load-custom-fonts-for-inky-frame/27798/4 "2025-05-20T06:04:59Z")

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If you read my answer in the cited post, you will see that I am talking about bitmap fonts and not BDF (the link to the guide posted at the end of that thread is a not from me and a bit misleading).

So your way to success is to use fontforge to create a bitmap font of the given size, and then use some obscure tool that you find in the Internet to convert it to a C-header file and then you would patch MicroPython to use your bitmap font instead of the one that is supplied.

Fonts are one of the reasons I use CircuitPython instead of MicroPython.

But Pimoroni added a new feature recently to (at least some of) their builds: “pico-vector” [pimoroni-pico/libraries/pico\_vector at main · pimoroni/pimoroni-pico · GitHub](https://github.com/pimoroni/pimoroni-pico/tree/main/libraries/pico_vector)

Looking at the source code, it seems it can load vector fonts, but all of this is not documented on a user level. But maybe someone else can help here.