Get Discord's Old Font Back! (And Why They Changed it!) 

nice

nobody in their right mind would pay a million a year for a font, it couldnt make more sense for them to change it honestly

also because its SOO FRICKING THINNNN

Pls unban me from ur discord server i have a family and 3 kids

and also That font is shit in Cyrillic

Sites like ProtonMail used to allow custom themes in their entirety. Used to be a really common feature of websites 5-10 years ago. However, this feature has been removed from sites since. I think the primary part of it is a Cyber Security concern and another part is a development concern and the last part is a licensing concern. When it comes to Discord, would it make more sense to have a "1 size fits all" or let users customize and have to lend support when they need help customizing, documenting everything, worrying about scams and hacks, etc.? Especially being a multi-national corporation with each country having various different consumer protection laws and copyright and licensing laws, it's probably just more effort than they'd like, which is why they're not as worried about banning BetterDiscord users like they are with self-bot users; one is just customizing (fulfilling a feature they can't or won't implement) while the other is using the service in a way that's against its intended usage.

@@v01d_r34l1ty If it's a font file the user imports from their computer is that any different from using a font in any other program? They don't have to license it since it isn't shipped with their product.

@@theairaccumulator7144 Don’t forget Discord is mostly web based. So while Electron may have this capability, if you want to save any user settings across devices, or port it anywhere else other than Electron, you would have to completely rewrite the same functionality. Browsers can render any system font so long as it’s properly installed, but good luck getting a list of fonts from the device. No super easy ways of seeing whether the font exists or not before trying to import it when it comes to CSS. This is from a design perspective, don’t know the explicit problems that would arise, these are only the implicit ones.

@@v01d_r34l1ty just put a cute frontend on css injection or something

@@v01d_r34l1ty They could just import the fonts from Google Fonts or something, as do many webapps that let the user pick fonts.

I didn't even noticed it lol

most visible in words like Violet it's as if someone's doing the MoCKinG tYpiNG and it's just, why

Pfp moment

The lowercase g is even misaligned

@@ENZO542_ BRO SAME- like i cant notice the difference- everyone kept talking abt it that i just... couldn't comprehend wtf was going on like the difference in the beginning video... i cant find any difference-

dont give them ideas

How does making a font a "one-time fee" make more sense? I'd love to hear that logic. Let's hear why it's a bad idea for business - people are going to see your font A LOT. Especially if, like the website suggests, you get a lot of traffic to your site/place of business. The more people that see your font, the more people that might want to use/adopt/support your font. It's really no different than saying "I think subscriptions to Twitch should be a one-time, never pay again so I can watch all the vods and never see ads, fee". It just doesn't make sense from a business point of view. Just because you CAN use something, doesn't mean they want you to continue to being able to use it. Plus, your idea is more like "why didn't they just put a creative license on it" (which I'm sure they probably have in addition to the price). Your idea, from a User standpoint, is great. Your idea, from a Business standpoint, sucks.

@@Dyanosis twitch example makes no sense. how subscriptions would be one-time payment?

​@@pollo7889 fonts are subscription based too...

​@@Dyanosis I'm just saying that putting a monthly price tag on a font sounds ridiculous to me. I didn't mean to shame the business for its money-making decisions. Buying fonts is the same as buying art, since both are visual pieces. Can you imagine paying for a painting in your house every month?

if they ever do that they'll end up trying to make it a nitro thing i swear

@@noxxyy definitely

they could easily just make it not against tos but state they dont cover it

@@HyperrealisticLuigi they could but this is the more reliable way a discord dev has stated they won't ban people for it, it's just that this also covers any and all external clients, that way they don't have to add a whole clause about 'these specific ones are allowed' and have to update it when someone wants to use a new one

um, css file cant run code **

@xuellont i dont really think theres anything better discord does that u couldnt get by just opening ctrl + shift + i and pasting code in there lol

@@LiEnby people are creative

this exactly sounds like they didn't go through the process of "font hinting"

disabling font AA doesn't really improve performance much anymore. It's not 1999.

@@sznio maybe not, but I still wanna squeeze as much performance out of my cheap set up

@@joebidenofficialpotus it's a Windows setting universal to all displayed texts. Search for "Adjust the appearance" into your Windows search bar, deselect "Smooth the edges of screen fonts" and then Apply

Same. Helvetica is also very stylish

HELVETICA STANDURRR

@@sharanoth IS THAT REFERENCING WHAT I THINK IT'S REFERENCING

I'd disagree it's great on apple and stuff for example I wouldn't mind if google and youutube also use it but discord is mainly a dark themed website and i can't explain it because english my second language but i just like the old font :)

@@teddy_pm helvetica doesn't change the alphabet and it looks identical to roboto and arial

whitney supported cyrillic and greek scripts which gg sans doesnt sadly 😭

Also they defined exactly one Japanese letter in their font which now looks off to native speakers, namely the one the /shrug command emits in ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

imagine the shitstorm if discord made their own font WITHOUT extended letters though. it has an international community. they probably wanted to cover their backs

@@ncb0_ That I completely forgot to check, that is terrible. Although I guess it's also good: system font for the whole script. But I guess I praised them too early, they have barely more letters added.

@@actuallyel8936 As mentioned in my comment, in many parts of the UI, they force the US MDY format for all languages, where it makes no sense. They also force all languages to have a one/other plural system (even though that data is part of CLDR that they're using), and only allows for translations to be different if the English words are different, and requires the same translations for when English happens to use the same spelling in different contexts.

the way you type makes me want to reset my life

@@fumocult it's fine wdym

@@fumocult lmaoooo fr

@@fumocult It's called using proper English. So yea, do a reset and go back to school.

typical discord mod

still don't know why they didnt created a switch to choose between the old and the new font.

@@Certurix cause then theyd still have to pay to use that old font

Bro same

seme

Customizable applications are great but it is not viable for big companies and in my and many other ux/ui designers opinions it is just unnecessary

Same

The new discord font could be used by eye doctors as a test for astigmatism lmao No one notices it but damn I don't notice it either...because I can't read it anymore

@@luucy025 yea same 😭

@@atsizbalik I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're refering to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I've recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.

@@suchys_tv xD oh shut up lol -a linux user

@@atsizbalik na don’t worry he has linux

@@atsizbalik Cleartype makes font look different on windows.

@@atsizbalik Windows' cleartype font rendering makes things look a lot different, and fonts kind of need to be expressly designed to use it otherwise they're gonna look like ass. Windows literally changes the text color at the edges to make it appear sharper which absolutely kills how this new font looks, so I'm not surprised that Linux, which doesn't do this, looks better

the sad trade off with the new font is that it doesn't support greek and cyrillic letters like the old one did sadly. i have no idea why they strove to make other languages more accessible to discord and didnt bother remaking letters that the old one supported as well.

@@ranpo_edogawa That's why I added my last point. Instead of improving the existing font, they decided to change it even though no-one asked for it. I'm completely fine with the new font, but regardless, that change was unnecessary and, as you pointed out, already caused uncalled-for problem.

i'd use comic sans

Yeah its gonna be locked behind nitro tho because discord

@@PleomaxProductions Of course.

@@JACKHARRINGTON Honestly, Same.

Actually yeah cause `system-font` is like a 'variable' so technically they wouldnt be actually using any font because the OS will set it to whatever the os font is

Roboto for Android and Segue for Windows, I like that. Those fonts look good and are often the default in a lot of software already.

I can hardly even see any difference

@@sergeantheavyass3471 same everyone is just overreacting

@@RaydonRn Me and many others can literally barely read the new font, I'm unsure how that's "overreacting"? Maybe it's nothing to you, but even a slight font change can become an accessibility issue to others.

@@AShatteredDragonsSpirit Yeah you are right, I tried zooming out and I can see how it can be an issue for others. I don't even know when they changed the font because I literally couldn't tell haha

@@RaydonRn Because they have to pay for the old font

Yeah the thinness and tightly packed letters (aka the kerning) are mostly what make it hard to read.

@@thegammakat thinness is also called "weight". So kerning and weight!

Nah, Discord changes their fonts all the time. The last one isn't classic, it's just one of many, and people hated on it when it came out as well (tho for aesthetic reasons, not accessibility)

Bruh I hate those lowercase L's, that's the first thing I noticed about the new font. Luckily, the font hasn't changed for me on desktop yet.

i understand why they hate it and i dislike it too, but I'm not that pissed off to literally download something to change the font

yea i dont mind the new font

they do localized our custom glyphs so that it wont be broken as the old font so i find it okay too.

For me this is an accessibility problem, i have reading problems and i just can't read discord anymore due to this...

@@Julienraptor01 just press Ctrl + to make the text bigger, and Ctrl - to make it smaller

d

shutyobishahzup!

shut

Yeah, its really frightening to see you bring up some non-existant genius of yours...it almost reminds me of schizophrenia.

never seen a smart person named dong

agreed

Yeah just slight changes I think.

Aliucord

🙏

Hell nah

same

bait

Yeah, I actually kind of like it too. Though I completely understand why some people prefer Whitney over gg sans. IMO discord should've used an open-source font instead of making a new one. Another option they could do is create manually hinted version so that the text remains legible at small sizes. Or they could also redesign it so that it more closely resembles Whitney / humanist sans-serif in general, since those types of fonts are well known for their legibility.

@@vadsxwred5539 cry

But then again, they'll have to pay for it

@@onlygoodperson a feature like that would take 2 minutes to implement

@@JrockProject1 did you watch the whole video? They have to pay around $50k a year to use the previous font because its owned by another company so adding a toggle would pretty much defeat the point of adding a new font.

weird, it looks like Discord reverted my changes? The Better Discord tab in the settings is gone and the old font is back... It's back after redownloading, but that's strange... Hope it doesn't wipe again

Bro i have reading problems and i just can't read discord anymore due to this... For me this is more than just a look problem it's an accessibility one

It's much harder for the eyes, especially for people with astigmatism or dyslexia

If it was bolder it would be better

your really a drop in a sea bro, this new font is ass and i have to squint my eyes to see it

It's just a lot cleaner, slim.

But the font is ugly though it's pure ass 😭