Today I Learned - listing installed fonts on macOS and Linux

Piotr Pliszko

If you want to get a list of all installed fonts on macOS or most Linux distributions, you can use the fc-list command to do so.

❯ fc-list
/System/Library/Fonts/SFCompact.ttf: .SF Compact:style=Thin
/System/Library/Fonts/Apple Color Emoji.ttc: .Apple Color Emoji UI:style=Regular
/System/Library/Fonts/SFNSMonoItalic.ttf: .SF NS Mono:style=Medium Italic
/System/Library/Fonts/SFCompactItalic.ttf: .SF Compact:style=Ultralight Italic
/System/Library/Fonts/HelveLTMM: .Helvetica LT MM
# ...

Usually that much information is not required, so to just get only font family, use the fc-list : family command.

❯ fc-list : family
STIXIntegralsUp
.SF Georgian Rounded
Seravek
Chalkboard
Bodoni Ornaments
Noto Sans Lepcha
Noto Sans Kannada,Noto Sans Kannada Medium
Arial Rounded MT Bold
Noto Sans Myanmar,Noto Sans Myanmar Blk
.SF Armenian Rounded
Heiti TC,黑體\-繁,黒体\-繁,Heiti\-번체,黑体\-繁
PT Sans
# ...

You can also pipe the output to sort and uniq to get a little better organised result.

❯ fc-list : family | sort | uniq
.Al Bayan PUA
.Al Nile PUA
.Al Tarikh PUA
.Apple Color Emoji UI
.Apple SD Gothic NeoI,Apple SD 산돌고딕 Neo
.Aqua Kana,.Aqua かな,.Aqua Kana Bold,.Aqua かな ボールド,⹁煵愠芩苈
.Aqua Kana,.Aqua かな,⹁煵愠芩苈
.Arial Hebrew Desk Interface
.Baghdad PUA
.Beirut PUA
.Damascus PUA
.DecoType Naskh PUA
# ...

Or you can grep to find specific fonts.

❯ fc-list : family | grep Ubuntu | sort
Ubuntu
Ubuntu Condensed
Ubuntu Mono
Ubuntu,Ubuntu Light
Ubuntu,Ubuntu Thin
If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to reach out to me on GitHub, Twitter/X or LinkedIn!