In the GNOME settings, a change has been made to the default font interface, opting for the use of the specially designed Inter font. This font is optimized for high clarity of symbols at small and medium sizes, particularly less than 12px, when displayed on computers. It is anticipated that this change may be reversed before the release of GNOME 47 in the autumn if testing results are deemed unsuccessful.
By default, the Inter font has been noted to have certain issues such as the visual similarity between the capital letter “I” and the lowercase “L”, as well as between the letters “O” and the numbers “0”. These issues have been successfully addressed by setting the optional “SS02” in the font-feature-settings property supported in GTK.
The reason for replacing the old Cantarell font, which has been in use in GNOME since 2010, is attributed to stagnation and lack of support, particularly evident when compared to the active development of the Inter font. The Inter font has garnered a large community focused on advancing the font’s capabilities, rectifying its shortcomings, and ensuring quality display across various languages and screen types.
To test the new font within existing GNOME installations, users must download and extract the ZIP archive containing the Inter font, install it by double-clicking on Intervariable.ttf and Intervariable-italic.ttf in the GNOME Fonts application, and then activate it as the interface font using GNOME Tweaks or by running the command “gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface font-name ‘Inter Variable 11′”.