When you activate fonts from Adobe Fonts, they will appear in the font menus of all your desktop applications, such as Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Microsoft Office, and iWork. Use these fonts for print design, website mockups, word processing, and more.

Fonts are activated on your computer through Creative Cloud desktop. If you do not have the software installed, you can download it here.

Choose fonts to activate

Start by browsing the library of fonts. You can choose the language support you require from the LANGUAGES AND WRITING SYSTEMS drop-down menu.

Add tags or filters to refine the list of fonts. Use our natural language search tags to browse fonts that fit the mood of your project, or you can filter by classification (such as serif or sans serif), properties (x-height, width, or weight), or language.

The collection of Japanese fonts has different filtering options, so you can browse for kana-only fonts or by style classifications like Mincho, Gothic, Maru Gothic, and Brush.

When you find a font you like, click to view the family page. Select the font weights and styles you want to use, or use the menu at the top of the list to add full families.

Active fonts are shown in Creative Cloud desktop by clicking the f menu icon in the upper right corner.

If your fonts don’t show up in Creative Cloud desktop within a minute or two, check the troubleshooting guide.

Use the fonts in your desktop software programs

Once the fonts are active, they are added to the font menu in each application, alongside all of your locally installed fonts. They will be immediately available in most programs, but a few need to be restarted to add new fonts to the menu (for example, Adobe Acrobat and Microsoft Office).

In addition to being listed in Creative Cloud desktop, your active fonts are listed on the website under the Active Fonts tab on My Adobe Fonts. 

You can activate as many fonts as you'd like, but we recommend keeping your active font list short to optimize performance. Every font you deactivate is tracked in your Previously Active tab, so you can easily activate them again at any time.

Read more about managing your fonts.

Using the fonts in older versions of Creative Cloud and third-party apps

Please note that Adobe fonts that have not been used in over 150* days need to be reinstalled for use in older Creative Cloud and third-party apps. Creative Cloud keeps apps running smoothly by periodically cleaning up fonts that you don’t appear to be using.

You can quickly reinstall fonts on the Adobe Fonts website by clicking the cloud icon next to the font name in your Active Fonts list. Once the fonts are reinstalled, they will show up as usual in all your font menus. 

We recommend keeping Creative Cloud software up-to-date for the best font experience.

*Number of days is subject to change

Read more about reinstalling fonts that are no longer in use.