This App Allows Users to Change Fonts on iOS 16 Without Jailbreaking

While Android users have the freedom to personalise the user interface to their heart's content, Apple is notorious for following a rigid aesthetic to offer an experience to all users of iOS. Apple has been offering more and more customisability in iOS lately. There is now an app library, and widget support. But so far, the only way to infuse custom fonts in iOS was to jailbreak the operating system, something that is both illegal and extremely difficult to do.

However, a software developer has managed to find a way to use custom fonts in iOS without having to go through the painful process of jailbreaking. The app works on iOS 16.1.2 and below and has nine different fonts to play around with.

Custom Fonts on iOS?

The developer who goes by the name Zhuowei Zhang (@zhuowei) shared the app, called WDBFontOverwrite on Twitter, and has been adding more and more fonts to it. The app is essentially a proof-of-concept that overwrites the default system font on iOS, named - San Francisco - by using a known exploit called CVE-2022-46689.

The font replacement, however, is temporary and rolls back to the system font upon a reboot. The developer warns users to make a backup before installing the app.

What are the Caveats?

That said, the app only applies the custom fonts in certain sections. There are screenshots of the Settings app, Apple Music, App Store, Messages, Contacts, and the Weather app showing the custom fonts. This is actually a comprehensive coverage of most commonly used apps on iPhones.

The developer has so far added nine different fonts such as DejaVu Sans Mono, Go Regular, Go Mono, Fira Sans, Segoe UI, Comic Sans MS, Choco Cooky,DejaVu Sans Condensed, and DejaVu Serif.

The developer has also invited others to add more fonts to the app, hosted on GitHub. The final release of the app till date also allows users to import custom fonts.

However, the biggest caveat is that the app only works on iOS 16.1.2 and below, and not on the latest iOS 16.2 update, which fixes the vulnerability the app exploits. So if you are using the latest iPhones in India, that means a choice between 5G support and custom fonts.