Fonts - Change

How to Change the Default Fonts in Windows 7​

   Information

This will show you how to change most or all of the default fonts in Windows 7 for Active Title Bar, Icon, Inactive Title Bar, Menu, Message Box, Palette Title, Selected Items, ToolTip, and various Dialog Box text and buttons.

:warn:Changing a Windows 7 font doesn't change your program fonts.

For a list of all default fonts that come supplied with Windows 7, see: Fonts supplied with Windows 7

OPTION ONE

Through Advanced Appearance Settings

   Note

This will let you change the default font, font size, and font color for the Active Title Bar, Icon, Inactive Title Bar, Menu, Message Box, Palette Title, Selected Items, and ToolTip text. See this link under step 8 there for the default Advanced Appearance settings: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/282-window-color-appearance-change.html

   Tip

All Advanced Appearance settings for a single user are stored in the three registry keys below.

• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Colors
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\Colors
• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics

1. If you have Windows 7 Starter or Home Basic
A) Open the Control Panel (icons view), and click on the Display icon.

B) In the left blue pane, click on the Change color scheme link. (see screenshot below)

C) Click on the Advanced button. (see screenshot below)

D) Go to step 3.
2. If you have Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional, Ultimate, or Enterprise
A) Right click on a empty space on the desktop and click on Personalize. (see screenshot below)

B) Click on the Window Color link at the bottom of the window. (See screenshot below)

C) Click on the Advanced appearance settings link. (See screenshot below)

   Warning

• If you have selected a Basic and High Contrast Themes, then you will not see the screenshot. Instead, you will see the screenshot below step 4.
• If you have selected a Aero Themes, then you will see the screenshot. Continue to step 4.

3. Select a Item that you want to change the font for. (see screenshots below)
NOTE: Not all of these items will have a font for them.




4. To Change the Item Font
A) Click on the Font drop down menu and select a font. (see screenshot below)

5. To Change the Item Font Size
A) Click on the Size drop down menu and select a number for the size. The higher the number, the larger the size. (see screenshot above)
6. To Change the Item Font Color
A) Click on the Color drop down menu and select a color. (see screenshot below step 4)
7. To Have the Item Font in Bold
A) Click the B button to highlight it. If it is not highlighted, then the font will not be in bold. (see screenshot below step 4)
8. To Have the Item Font in Italic
A) Click on the I button to highlight it. If it is not highlighted, then the font will not be in italic. (see screenshot below step 4)
9. Repeat steps 3 to 8 until you have changed all of the fonts for the select items that you wanted.

10. When done, click on OK. (see screenshots below step 3)

11. Close the Window Color and Appearance window. (see screenshot below step 2B)
NOTE: You will not have this to do if you have a Basic and High Contrast Themes selected.

OPTION TWO

To Change or Restore Default Dialog Box Text and Buttons Fonts

NOTE: This will let you change the default fonts for most of the Windows 7 dialog box text and button text through the registry.
1. To Change the Dialog Box Text and Buttons Fonts
A) Open the Start Menu, type regedit in the search box, and press Enter.

B) If prompted by UAC, then click on Yes.

C) In regedit, navigate to the location below (See screenshots below)
NOTE: The default fonts are the ones displayed below.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\FontSubstitutes

D) In the right pane, right click on MS Shell Dlg and click on Modify. (See screenshot above)

E) Type in the name of the font you want to use and click on OK. (See left screenshot below)
NOTE: You can get the name of the font from the Font Folder Location C:\Windows\Fonts. Right click on the single font and click on Properties to see the file name. For a font group, you will need to open it first to see the single fonts in it. Be sure that you use the exact same font name that is listed. Do not include the Regular part or file extension in the font name. For example, I would type Impact instead of Impact Regular or Impact.ttf.




F) In the right pane, right click on MS Shell Dlg 2 and click on Modify. (See screenshot below step 1C)

G) Type in the name of the font you want to use and click on OK. (See left screenshot below)
NOTE: You can get the name of the font from the Font Folder Location C:\Windows\Fonts. Be sure that you use the exact same font name that is listed. Do not include the Regular part in the font name. For example, I would type Impact instead of Impact Regular.




H) Close regedit.

I) Go to step 3.
2. To Restore Default Dialog Box Text and Buttons Fonts
A) Click on the Download button below, and download the file below.
Restore_Default_Dialog_Box_Fonts.reg


Download


B) Save the .reg file to the desktop.

C) Right click the downloaded .reg file, and click on Merge.

D) Click on Run, Yes (UAC), Yes, and OK when prompted.

E) Continue on to step 3.
3. Log off and log on, or restart the computer to apply the font changes.

OPTION THREE

To Change All Default Fonts

NOTE: This will let you change the default fonts used by Windows 7 using the registry.
1. To Change Default Fonts Using a REG File Download
NOTE: This changes the default fonts in Windows 7 to the Tahoma font. You could use this REG file download to make doing step 2 below easier by editing the REG file for the font you want to use instead of Tahoma.
A) Click on the Download button below, and download the file below.
Set_Tahoma_Default_Font.reg


Download


B) Save the .reg file to your desktop.

C) Double click on the downloaded .reg file to merge it.

D) Click on Run, Yes (UAC), Yes, and OK when prompted to approve the merge.

E) Log off and log on, or restart the computer to apply changes.

F) When done, you can delete the downloaded .reg file if you like.
2. To Manually Change Default Fonts by Creating a REG File
NOTE: The REG file in step 1 is the same as in step 2B below. You can use it and just edit the font that you would like to use instead of Tahoma in step below.
A) Open Notepad.

B) Copy and Paste the code below into Notepad.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
 
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Fonts]
"Segoe UI (TrueType)"=""
"Segoe UI Bold (TrueType)"=""
"Segoe UI Italic (TrueType)"=""
"Segoe UI Bold Italic (TrueType)"=""
"Segoe UI Semibold (TrueType)"=""
"Segoe UI Light (TrueType)"=""
 
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\FontSubstitutes]
"Segoe UI"="[B][COLOR=red]Tahoma[/COLOR][/B]"

C) In Notepad, edit Tahoma in quotes with the name of the font that you would like to use in instead with it still in quotes. (see screenshot below)
NOTE: You can get the name of the font from the Font Folder Location C:\Windows\Fonts. Be sure that you use the exact same font name that is listed. Do not include the Regular part in the font name. For example, I would type Impact instead of Impact Regular.




D) In Notepad, click on File (Menu bar) and Save As. (see screenshot below)

E) Type in a name you would like with a .reg file extension (ex: Impact-Fonts.reg), then click on the Save button. (see screenshot below)

D) Double click on the downloaded .reg file to merge it.

E) Click on Run, Yes (UAC), Yes, and OK when prompted to approve the merge.

F) Log off and log on, or restart the computer to apply changes.
3. To Restore the Default Fonts
NOTE: This will ONLY undo all changes that you made using either step 1 or step 2 in OPTION THREE above, and restore the original default fonts used by Windows 7.
A) Click on the Download button below, and download the file below.
Default_Fonts.reg


Download


B) Save the .reg file to your desktop.

C) Double click on the downloaded .reg file to merge it.

D) Click on Run, Yes (UAC), Yes, and OK when prompted to approve the merge.

E) Log off and log on, or restart the computer to apply changes.

F) When done, you can delete the downloaded .reg file if you like.
That's it,
Shawn

Related Tutorials

---

• How to See a Preview of the Fonts in Windows 7 and Windows 8
• How to Delete Fonts in Windows 7 and Windows 8
• How to Install a Font in Windows 7 and Windows 8
• How to Show and Hide Fonts in Windows 7 and Windows 8
• How to Change the Display DPI Size in Windows 7
• How to Change the Window Color and Appearance in Windows 7
• How to Create a Font Settings Shortcut in Windows 7 and Windows 8
• How to Change Font Styles Used for Webpages in Internet Explorer
• How to Open and Use ClearType Text Tuner in Windows 7
• How to Enable or Disable "Smooth Edges of Screen Fonts"

 

[Brink]

Hello Javadth,

Did you use Option Three?

It looks like you are also using a custom theme/skin, so that may be overriding this as well.

 

[Wam7]

How many years later and people such as myself still finding this useful. Many thanks Brink for the reg file, exactly what I was looking for.

As well as the font I might like to change the default size to 10pts. Is there a way to accomplish this via the reg file also?

Regards

 

[Brink]

Hello Wam, and welcome to Seven Forums.

If you like, you could use step 5 in OPTION ONE to change the size of fonts for items in Advanced Appearance settings.

 

[Wam7]

Hello Wam, and welcome to Seven Forums.

If you like, you could use step 5 in OPTION ONE to change the size of fonts for items in Advanced Appearance settings.

Thanks for the welcome, long time for a first post though I've been visiting for a very long time.

Thanks but I know how to change the font size, my question was specifically how to do this via a reg file, so it can be a one-click process as you've done here with the reg file for changing the font.

Regards

 

[Brink]

Wam,

The problem is that these settings are stored as a binary value, and are not easy to set manually in the registry. If you like, once you have it set the way you want, you could export the WindowMetrics registry key below to be able to export them again later to set them back as needed. This would be the easy way of having them how you like in a .reg file.

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics

 

[deyamag]

Thanks.

 

[kl9952]

Thanks very much for the info to change the fonts from Segoe UI, I used the Set_Tahoma_Default_Font.reg file which worked a treat.

Changing the font to Tahoma gives a much better appearance to Win 7 but it has created another problem, instead of getting a "Tick" symbol in checkboxes I get a tiny symbol with a hand holding a pen, its so small its very difficult to see.

Is there any way to get the normal "Tick" symbol back ?

 

[Brink]

Hello kl9952, and welcome to Seven Forums.

I'm not sure about the "tick" symbol since nothing in this tutorial would change that.

If you like, you could do a system restore using a restore point dated before the "tick" symbol changed to undo it, then reapply your font changes.

 

[kl9952]

Thanks for your quick reply, its definitely to do with changing the font using your reg file download, if I run the restore reg file the normal tick comes back but then of course I loose the new font !

I changed it to Tahoma and I wondered if there is no tick symbol in that font, also tried Arial and the result is the same.

Do you get the same result on your computer ?

There are plenty of examples on the SevenForum website such as the check boxes for "Additional Options" on the webpage where I am writing this reply.

 

[Brink]

I don't get that issue on my system. I still have the checks for check boxes like below. Could you post a screenshot showing what you are seeing before and after using the .reg file to see if I may be able to ID or replicate the issue?

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/9733-screenshots-files-upload-post-seven-forums.html

 

[kl9952]

I have uploaded a screenshot of part of a SevenForum webpage showing the "Hand with a pen"

Before I changed the font I got a "Tick" symbol just like in your screenshot.

 

[Brink]

Ah, I see what you mean now. I get the same in Internet Explorer instead of Windows Explorer.

I'll have to look into this more to see what may be causing it since I don't see anything obvious for why.

 

[Brink]

Ok. I found the culprit. It was changing the font below that caused it. Please try the new .reg download in the tutorial to see how it works for you now.

"Segoe UI Symbol (TrueType)"=""

 

[kl9952]

That works great, thanks very much for fixing it, it should have been obvious to me as well "Symbol" is a bit of a give away.

Its amazing nobody has noticed that since your original post back in 2008.

 

[Brink]

You're most welcome.

Those were my thoughts as well, but just didn't click back then for some reason.

 

[giova]

How can I change the fonts in control panel and in the command module?

 

[Brink]

Hello Giova,

OPTION THREE should change the font for all Windows dialogs.

The command prompt wouldn't be included since it's a separate program, but you can use the tutorial below to do so though.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/50539-command-prompt-personalize.html

 

[bob93]

Hello Coldout,

What text location on the desktop has not changed?

Shawn

Hey Shawn, quoting only to mention you. I need to change both the font and size used everywhere including control panel and its applets. The font size in those places seems to be hardcoded but I reckon there was a way using third party software. Do you know?

 

[Brink]

Hey Shawn, quoting only to mention you. I need to change both the font and size used everywhere including control panel and its applets. The font size in those places seems to be hardcoded but I reckon there was a way using third party software. Do you know?

Hello mate,

I posted something below in your original thread for this that will hopefully help.

How to change the system font and size globally in all dialogs