Fonts For most desktop environments, a sufficient number of fonts is installed as dependencies. However, there's several additional packages for different styles and writing systems (latin vs. non-latin scripts). Arch Wiki has an extensive list of available fonts in both the repositories and the AUR. Installing the Noto font family also provides a vast coverage over a large array of scripts. Configuration Most applications read the font configuration provided by the fontconfig library. These configurations are written in XML and read from several different locations. Location Description /etc/fonts/fonts.conf Master configuration file (not for editing!) /etc/fonts/conf.d System-wide additional drop-in configuration files, hand-written or as symbolic links $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/fontconfig/fonts.conf Per-user config file $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/fontconfig/conf.d Per-user additional drop-in configuration files, hand-written or as symbolic links Configuration files are read in and applied in lexical order. If you need rules applied in a specific order, make sure to prepend them with 2-digit numbers in the order you need. A minimal fontconfig configuration file contains these headers: Some font packages come with pre-defined rule sets, which are installed to /usr/share/fontconfig/conf.avail/. To apply them, it's best to create symbolic links to them in their respective drop-in configuration directories. To apply them system-wide, link them from the /etc/fonts/conf.d directory: cd /etc/fonts/conf.d sudo ln -s /usr/share/fontconfig/conf.avail/70-no-bitmaps-except-emoji.conf To apply them only to the currently logged in user, link them in the $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/fontconfig/conf.d directory: HINT: The environment variable $XDG_CONFIG_HOME should point to the .config sub-directory in your home directory. If it doesn't, use $HOME/.config instead for the examples or set it with export. mkdir $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/fontconfig/conf.d ln -s /usr/share/fontconfig/conf.avail/70-no-bitmaps-except-emoji.conf $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/fontconfig/conf.d Emoji Fonts There are a few emoji fonts available on Arch. Name Package Description JoyPixels ttf-joypixels formerly EmojiOne, part of Emoji as a Service, proprietary Noto Color Emoji noto-fonts-emoji Google open-source emoji font, color Twemoji (Twitter Emoji) ttf-twemoji (AUR) Emoji for everyone, originally created by Twitter Install your selected emoji font: pacman -S noto-fonts-emoji Applications requesting emoji to be displayed should pick up on the font after restarting them. NOTE: KDE sometimes applies emoji fonts incorrectly, either not showing them at all or showing the outline symbol version from a different font. You can fix this by installing noto-color-emoji-fontconfig from the AUR and creating a symbolic link to the configuration file as shown above.