Android 13 fonts

[Bob Henson]

I've just changed to a Motorola g84 5G phone running Android 13 and I
use dark mode wherever possible. I use the Microsoft launcher. I carried
everything forward from my old phone using Google and Microsoft launcher
cloud backups. I've just spent the usual long time setting up the apps
again and my old eyes are taking a hammering from reading settings,
particularly trying to find settings which will enable changing existing
fonts - I can change some of the sizes, but not the font.

One of the fonts used by the new phone (particularly for popup warnings
and instructions) has what I can only describe as "double" and/or
"hollow" letters - the only one I could find to illustrate it is the
Windows font Colonna MT regular. At the tiny sizes on the phone and
particularly as it is often used all in upper case, it is all but
unreadable to me. I didn't see it on my old phone (Android 11 and
Microsoft launcher) at all.

Can anyone tell me a) (out of curiosity) what font it is and b) how the
hell I get rid of it?

 

[ocnbrze]

is the font only different when you get popups? have you tried changing the font for the phone? is there a way you can post what you are talking about?

 

[Bob Henson]

I'll wait for an example to appear and see if I can get a screen grab of it. It's not the normal phone font, it appears when messages appear - maybe popups is the wrong word.

 

[Dannydet]

These "pop ups" you mention might just be ads that come with different apps on your phone. Do you use an ad blocker?
Do a search in the play store, install one, and see if that makes these annoying pop ups go away.
Personally, I use Adguard, which is not in the play store but I have used it for years and never a problem with ads.

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[Bob Henson]

No, they aren't adverts - they are part of the normal operating system. I probably used a misleading phrase calling them popups, which, I gather, has a specific meaning - what I meant was that they just appear for no good reason that I can see. I'll attach a screen grab I just got. At the scale it shows up here the text is simple to read, but on a small phone screen my 80 year old eyes can't cope. It has used the double lettering where it says "rate you provider" but not BT below it. The BT above "speed" has used the odd lettering.. The word "speed" at the bottom Is normal but "video", "status", "Map" and "VPN" are. The "ID 9640322863" above is what I was complaining about - at phone size I cannot read it at all, although on the magnified screen grab it is fairly clear. On the phone I would need to expand the text or use a magnifying glass. There are other bits on this screen in the same double font - "Mbps" but not the words immediately adjacent to it, "ms" after ping and jitter. This grab is not the best example, but on a phone screen with different (particularly light) colour background any text like this is unreadable to me. The more I look at it, the more I think it might be the normal font with weird shadowing background applied - anyway, this is what I would like to prevent if it can be done.
Regards,

Bob

 

[Bob Henson]

Having carried on searching myself, I have accidentally stumbled on the answer to the problem. It was not a separate font. When I set up the phone, one of the display options was to enable high contrast text to improve. Having, as I mentioned, poor eyesight, I set it on. It would appear that far from helping with contrast, this setting changed some of the text (why only some?) to the double letters that caused the problem - making readability much worse, not much better. My guess is that it might have worked has I not been using dark mode. Either way round, the Android devs got it horribly wrong. I've unticked the setting and the horrible text has gone away. Some checking showed that the items previously "doubled" were quite low contrast items, but they are now at least readable. It's fairly typical these days - make a half hearted attempt to change something, only to not check out all the options and make it worse.
Thanks to those who took the time to help - much appreciated.
Regards,

Bob

 

[olbriar]

That is indeed a lousy font. I found a couple of things you might try on the net.
How do I change the font on my Motorola 5g?

Go to Settings > Display > Styles. Touch , then follow onscreen instructions to select: Fonts for screen elements.

And this:
Can you change font style on Moto G Stylus 5g?

To adjust other font and display options, touch & hold a blank space on your home screen, then touch Personalize.

I do not own your phone so I can't say that either method will fix your font issue.

added: I'm happy that you solved the problem. That font was terrible!! Thanks for posting the solution. It might well help another with the same issue.