How to enable/disable fonts on Windows 10

We’ve talked about how you install and uninstall fonts on Windows 10. The process is simple and often, the only obstacle is finding the right font for your project. The only problem is that installing and uninstalling fonts is a permanent change. Out of the box, you cannot enable/disable fonts on Windows 10 which, if you’re working with a lot of them, is an easier way to manage fonts. You can use a third-party app called FontBase to easily enable/disable fonts on Windows 10.

Enable/disable fonts

Before you can enable/disable fonts, you need to install them however, you will not be installing them the usual way i.e., through the Windows installation method.

Instead, create a new folder and move all the fonts you want to use to it. If you’re working on several different projects and have downloaded fonts for each of them, it’s best to create a separate folder for each project and move the fonts to it. Move the folders somewhere you know they won’t accidentally be deleted.

Install and run FontBase. By default, this app lets you enable and disable Google fonts and out of the box, those are the only ones that it can detect. To add your fonts to FontBase, drag and drop the font folders you created onto the Folders section in the app. Once the folder(s) has been added, you can select the fonts in it and preview them.

To enable a font, click the little button next to its name. Once the font is active, you can open the font selection dropdown in an app and select it.

To disable the font, click the same button that you clicked before to enable it and the font will be disabled.

FontBase can be minimized to the system tray so it’s easy to recall whenever you need to enable or disable a font.

Font selection matters a lot in design and you likely do download a lot of them to try for a single project. Managing them all within an app isn’t easy. If you’re using, for example, Photoshop, you can create a layer for each font and show/hide it when you need to compare fonts but not all apps are Photoshop, and they don’t all have a simple way to show or hide a font. If you need to get rid of clutter or reduce font noise, this is a pretty easy way to do it. You can also take advantage of the Google fonts if you need to.