How to uninstall a font on Windows 10

Installing a font on Windows 10 is easy; open the file to preview the fonts, and inside you’ll fine an Install button. You can also right-click a font, and select the install option in the context menu. In some cases, you may need admin rights to install a font but it’s a simple process regardless. If you need to uninstall a font though, the process is somewhat elusive. It’s not hard, but it’s not as obvious as installing a font. Here’s how you can uninstall a font on Windows 10.

Uninstall a font

You can uninstall a font on Windows 10 from the Settings app, and from Control Panel. It’s up to you to pick how you uninstall it.

Uninstall font – Settings app

Open the Settings app and go to the Personalization group of settings. Select the Font tab. Use the search bar at the top to look for the font that you want to uninstall. If you do not remember the name, you can go through the library of installed fonts and pick it out. Select the font.

On the font screen, you’ll see an Uninstall button. Click it.

Confirm you want to uninstall the font, and it will be removed.

Uninstall font – Control Panel

Open Control Panel and select Appearance and Personalization. On the Appearance and Personalization screen, select Fonts. You will see a complete library of installed fonts. Right-click the font you want to uninstall and select Delete from the context menu.

Fonts are easy to uninstall but you may be curious as to what happens when a font that was being used by an app or in a file is uninstalled.

For apps, they will always fall back to their default font. If you set a different default font in Microsoft Word, and later uninstalled it, it will return to using Cambria. For files, things are a bit different. It is highly likely that in the case of a file like a Word document, the file will do with a different, usually the default font. With other types of files like a Photoshop file where the font is used within a layer, it is possible you’ll get an empty layer, or you’ll see a warning telling you the font is no longer available and the layer cannot be edited.

Some apps let you embed a font within a file so that it’s always available even if you’re viewing it on a system that doesn’t have the font installed. These apps are rather rare.