Font Renderer Component

ESPHome’s graphical rendering engine also has a powerful font drawer which integrates seamlessly into the system. You have the option to use any OpenType/TrueType (.ttf, .otf, .woff) font file at any size, as well as fixed-size PCF and BDF bitmap fonts.

These fonts can be used in ESPHome’s own rendering engine or in the LVGL Graphics component.

To use fonts you can either

  • Just grab a .ttf, .otf, .woff, .pcf, or .bdf file from somewhere on the internet and place it, for example, inside a fonts folder next to your configuration file.

  • Use the gfonts:// short form to use Google Fonts directly.

  • Load a font from a URL directly on build.

Next, create a font: section in your configuration:

# Various ways to configure fonts
font:
  - file: "fonts/Comic Sans MS.ttf"
    id: my_font
    size: 20
    bpp: 2

  - file: "fonts/tom-thumb.bdf"
    id: tomthumb

    # gfonts://family[@weight]
  - file: "gfonts://Roboto"
    id: roboto_20
    size: 20

  - file:
      type: gfonts
      family: Roboto
      weight: 900
    id: roboto_16
    size: 16

  - file: "gfonts://Material+Symbols+Outlined"
    id: icons_50
    size: 50
    glyphs: ["\U0000e425"] # mdi-timer

  - file: "fonts/RobotoCondensed-Regular.ttf"
    id: roboto_special_28
    size: 28
    bpp: 4
    glyphs: [
      a,A,á,Á,e,E,é,É,
      (,),+,-,_,.,°,•,µ,
      "\u0020", #space
      "\u0021", #!
      "\u0022", #"
      "\u0027", #'
      ]

  - file: "fonts/RobotoCondensed-Regular.ttf"
    id: my_font_with_icons
    size: 20
    bpp: 4
    extras:
      - file: "fonts/materialdesignicons-webfont.ttf"
        glyphs: [
          "\U000F02D1", # mdi-heart
          "\U000F05D4", # mdi-airplane-landing
          ]

  - file:
      type: gfonts
      family: Roboto
    id: roboto_european_core
    size: 16
    glyphsets:
      - GF_Latin_Core
      - GF_Greek_Core
      - GF_Cyrillic_Core

  - file: "https://github.com/IdreesInc/Monocraft/releases/download/v3.0/Monocraft.ttf"
    id: web_font
    size: 20
  - file:
      url: "https://github.com/IdreesInc/Monocraft/releases/download/v3.0/Monocraft.ttf"
      type: web
    id: web_font2
    size: 24

display:
  # ...

Configuration variables:

  • file (Required, string): The path (relative to where the .yaml file is) of the font file. You can also use the gfonts:// short form to use Google Fonts, or use the below structure:

    • type (Required, string): Can be local, gfonts or web.

    Local Fonts:

    • path (Required, string): The path (relative to where the .yaml file is) of the OpenType/TrueType or bitmap font file.

    Google Fonts:

    Each Google Font will be downloaded once and cached for future use. This can also be used to download Material Symbols or Icons as in the example above.

    • family (Required, string): The name of the Google Font family.

    • italic (Optional, boolean): Whether the font should be italic.

    • weight (Optional, enum): The weight of the font. Can be either the text name or the integer value:

      • thin: 100

      • extra-light: 200

      • light: 300

      • regular: 400 (default)

      • medium: 500

      • semi-bold: 600

      • bold: 700

      • extra-bold: 800

      • black: 900

    Web Fonts:

    • url (Required, string): The URL of the TrueType or bitmap font file.

  • id (Required, ID): The ID with which you will be able to reference the font later in your display code.

  • size (Optional, int): The size of the font in pt (not pixel!). If you want to use the same font in different sizes, create two font objects. Note: size is ignored by bitmap fonts. Defaults to 20.

  • bpp (Optional, int): The bit depth of the rendered font from OpenType/TrueType, for anti-aliasing. Can be 1, 2, 4, 8. Defaults to 1.

  • glyphsets (Optional, list): A list of glyphsets you plan to use. Defaults to GF_Latin_Kernel, which contains the basic characters and necessary punctuation and symbols for the English language. GF_Latin_Core is a more extended set that includes glyphs for the languages of Europe and the Americas with over 5 million speakers. Other options include GF_Arabic_Core, GF_Cyrillic_Core, GF_Greek_Core, their Plus variants, as well as GF_Latin_African, GF_Latin_PriAfrican and GF_Latin_Vietnamese. See the Google Fonts Glyphset documentation for an extensive list of all possible sets, along with their names and the languages supported by each of those sets. Note that GF_Latin_Kernel may need to be included for glyphs for basic characters such as numbers (0-9) and whitespace to be present.

  • glyphs (Optional, list): A list of characters you plan to use, in addition to the characters defined by the glyphsets option above. Adjust this list if you need some special characters or want to reduce the size of the binary if you don’t plan to use certain glyphs. Both single characters (a, b, c) or strings of characters (abc, def) are acceptable options. You can also specify glyphs by their codepoint (see below).

  • ignore_missing_glyphs (Optional, boolean): By default, warnings are generated for any glyph that is included in the defined glyphsets but not present in the configured font. Use this setting to suppress those warnings. Please note that the absence of any manually defined glyphs (specified via the glyphs option) will always be treated as an error and will not be influenced by this setting.

  • extras (Optional, enum): A list of font glyph configurations you’d like to include within this font, from other OpenType/TrueType files (eg. icons from other font, but at the same size as the main font):

    • file (Required, string): The path of the font file with the extra glyphs.

    • glyphs (Required, list): A list of glyphs you want to include. Can’t repeat the same glyph codepoint if it was declared in the level above.

Note

OpenType/TrueType font files offer icons at codepoints far from what’s reachable on a standard keyboard, for these it’s needed to specify the unicode codepoint of the glyph as a hex address escaped with \u or \U.

  • Code points up to 0xFFFF are encoded like \uE6E8. Lowercase \u and exactly 4 hexadecimal digits.

  • Code points above 0xFFFF are encoded like \U0001F5E9. Capital \U and exactly 8 hexadecimal digits.

The extras section only supports OpenType/TrueType files, size and bpp will be the same as the above level. This will allow printing icons alongside the characters in the same string, like I \uF004 You \uF001.

Many font sizes with multiple glyphs at high bit depths will increase the binary size considerably. Make your choices carefully.

Note

To use fonts you will need to have the python pillow package installed, as ESPHome uses that package to translate the OpenType/TrueType and bitmap font files into an internal format. If you’re running this as a Home Assistant add-on or with the official ESPHome docker image, it should already be installed. Otherwise you need to install it using pip install "pillow==10.4.0".

See Also