Why Figma fonts aren't showing — 5 causes and how to fix them

“I picked a font in Figma, but it’s not applying.” “Other teammates can see the font, but I can’t.” “The font is installed on my machine, but it doesn’t show up in Figma’s font picker.” — These are common scenarios for designers new to Figma, and especially in collaborative editing.

The root cause varies by environment (desktop vs web app, OS, shared project), and each requires a different fix. The visible symptom may look the same, but once you know where to look first, you can usually narrow it down within 5 minutes.

This guide walks through the 5 most common causes of “fonts not showing in Figma” and how to triage each one, in the order you should actually try them.

What you’ll get from this article

• The 5 main patterns of “fonts not showing” and the fix for each
• The role of the Font Installer (and why it differs between desktop and web app)
• How to handle shared projects where teammates don’t have the font installed
• Checkpoints when font names go wrong right after an XD → Figma migration
• A 5-minute flow to identify the cause

📝 Introduction — what’s actually going wrong

When you say “fonts aren’t showing in Figma,” several different problems may be hiding under the same complaint. The typical patterns look like this:

• The font picker doesn’t list a particular font even though you scrolled through it
• You select a font, but the text appearance doesn’t change
• The font looks fine on your screen but shows as Missing fonts for other teammates
• Right after converting from XD, font names drift and Figma falls back to the default
• You just installed a new font, but Figma doesn’t recognize it yet

These aren’t signs that “Figma is broken.” They come from differences in where Figma loads fonts from. The next section sets up just one piece of background, and then we’ll walk through the 5 causes one by one.

🔬 Why fonts don’t show in Figma

Figma renders text using fonts installed on the client side — your local machine, or your browser’s available font list. Fonts aren’t stored on Figma’s servers, which means:

• The font isn’t installed on your OS → it won’t appear in the picker
• The browser can’t read local fonts on the web app → you need the Font Installer
• A shared file with members who lack the font → those members see Missing fonts

In other words, if you can confirm that “the font is correctly installed on your environment, and Figma can access it (the path is set up correctly)”, that already covers the vast majority of cases.

🔍 Cause 1 — the font isn’t installed locally

The most common case: the font specified in your design isn’t installed on your OS. When the font name in the data doesn’t exist on your machine, Figma falls back to a substitute.

What you’ll see

• The font picker can’t find the font even via search
• Selecting the text layer shows a “Missing fonts” warning (red label / warning icon) in the font field
• The visual look (stroke weight, glyph shape) doesn’t match the original

How to verify

1. macOS: open Font Book. Windows: Settings → Personalization → Fonts. View your OS font list.
2. Search for the font name that isn’t applying
3. If it’s not there, the font isn’t installed on your OS

The fix

• Download from the source (Google Fonts / Adobe Fonts / the foundry’s website) and install on your OS
• After installing, restart Figma (desktop app) or reload the browser (web app)

🔍 Cause 2 — the Font Installer isn’t running (Web app)

If the font shows on the desktop app but not on the web app, suspect the Font Installer.

What the Font Installer is

Browsers don’t allow direct access to local fonts by default, so Figma provides a small helper utility called the Font Installer. It bridges OS and browser, letting the Figma web app read your OS font list.

What you’ll see

• The desktop app shows the font, but the web app doesn’t
• The font picker shows something like “Local fonts not available”
• Installed fonts show as Missing only on the web app

How to verify and fix

1. Download the latest version from Figma’s official “Font Installer” help page
2. Launch it and let it run in the background
3. Reload the browser → check if fonts are now recognized

🔍 Cause 3 — font name mismatches (common after XD → Figma migration)

When you convert from another tool like XD into Figma, you may run into cases where the font name drifts slightly and Figma can’t recognize it.

What you’ll see

• Right after conversion, the font shows as Missing fonts (red label / warning icon)
• The font is installed, yet Figma reports it as missing
• Example: XD has Noto Sans JP, but Figma is looking for Noto Sans Japanese

Common name variations

• Spaces present or absent: Noto Sans JP ↔ NotoSansJP
• Language label: Noto Sans JP ↔ Noto Sans Japanese
• With weight in the family name: Noto Sans JP Bold treated as a separate family vs Bold treated as a style
• Localized vs English names: 游ゴシック ↔ Yu Gothic, ヒラギノ角ゴ ↔ Hiragino Kaku Gothic (often Hiragino Sans on Adobe Fonts)

The fix

1. Select a text layer
2. Check the font name in the right panel
3. Reassign the correct font by picking it from Figma’s suggestions
4. To fix multiple instances at once, use Replace fonts in the Missing fonts modal, or a bulk font replacer plugin from the Figma Community

🔍 Cause 4 — shared file where teammates don’t have the font

“It looks fine on my screen, but my collaborators see Missing fonts” — that’s this case.

What you’ll see

• You: the font renders correctly
• Teammates: Missing fonts warning + fallback rendering
• Font errors appear every time the file is opened

Why it happens

Figma uses client-side fonts (each member’s OS). Designer-only fonts (paid commercial fonts, foundry licenses installed only on one machine) aren’t visible to teammates.

Your options

Option	Description	When it fits
Install the same font on every team member	Distribute the font to everyone	Small teams / OSS fonts
Custom Fonts (Organization / Enterprise plan)	Use Figma’s organization-level feature to share custom fonts across the team	Enterprise / paid plan in place
Replace with a Web font	Swap to fonts available everywhere (e.g. Google Fonts)	When OSS-friendly typography is acceptable

🔍 Cause 5 — font cache is out of sync

Fonts are installed correctly, yet Figma still doesn’t see them — sometimes the issue is a stale cache.

What you’ll see

• A font that worked yesterday is suddenly missing
• A newly-installed font isn’t recognized by Figma
• Reopening the file doesn’t help

Try in this order

1. Fully quit Figma and restart
2. Clear browser cache (web app)
3. Rebuild OS font cache (on macOS, commands like atsutil databases -remove are commonly cited; refer to your OS docs for the latest steps)
4. Restart the Font Installer (web app + Font Installer setups)
5. Restart your machine (last resort, but reliable)

OS-level font cache operations can be environment-dependent and potentially destructive, so start with restarting Figma and clearing browser cache as the safer first steps.

🧭 Troubleshooting flow — find the cause in 5 minutes

Here’s how to triage the 5 causes step by step.

Step 1: Is it happening on the desktop app or the web app?

• 🔴 Web app only → Cause 2 (Font Installer) is your top suspect
• 🟢 Both → continue to next step

Step 2: Is the font installed on your OS?

• 🔴 Not installed → Cause 1 (install it)
• 🟢 Installed → continue to next step

Step 3: Did the issue start right after an XD → Figma migration?

• 🔴 Yes → Cause 3 (font name mismatch) is your top suspect
• 🟢 No → continue to next step

Step 4: Is it just you, or your whole team?

• 🔴 Just you → Cause 5 (cache out of sync)
• 🔴 Whole team → Cause 4 (shared file with missing font on teammates’ machines)

Step 5: None of the above → check Figma’s official help and contact support

This flow identifies the cause in 90%+ of situations. The rest tend to be transient post-update bugs or unusual font formats — at that point, the latest information in Figma’s official help is the most reliable source.

🎯 When fonts don’t show right after migrating from XD

A particularly common scenario is “fonts not showing” right after converting an XD design into Figma. On top of Cause 3 (name mismatches), there are three intertwined factors:

• XD and Figma normalize font names with different rules
• Japanese fonts have name variations of their own (CJK derivatives, etc.)
• Different conventions for weights (Bold as a separate family vs as a style)

Priority order

1. Select a text layer → check the actual font name in the right panel
2. Verify the font is on your OS (Cause 1’s flow)
3. Reassign the font from Figma’s font picker
4. For multiple occurrences, use Replace fonts in the Missing fonts modal, or a Figma Community font replacer plugin to fix them in bulk

How Pixel Fine Converter helps

Pixel Fine Converter absorbs part of the weight-name drift and rendering shift through weight alternative expansion (lookupWeightAlternatives) and Japanese font baseline metric correction (FONT_CORRECTIONS). Specifically:

• Weight alternative expansion (closest match selection from Bold / SemiBold / Heavy and other derivations)
• Japanese font baseline position correction (Noto Sans JP / Noto Sans CJK JP / MS Gothic)

That said, family name normalization (e.g. Noto Sans JP ↔ Noto Sans Japanese) isn’t implemented today, so verifying font names on the Figma side and reassigning manually remains the practical workflow.

💬 FAQ

Q: Adobe Fonts aren’t showing up in Figma

A: Adobe Fonts sync to your OS through the Adobe Creative Cloud app. If Creative Cloud isn’t running, or the font isn’t “activated,” Figma can’t see it. Launch Creative Cloud, confirm the font is synced, then restart Figma.

Q: Fonts only fail on the Figma web app

A: The web app accesses local fonts through the Figma Font Installer. Verify it’s installed and running. Switching to the desktop app is often the quickest workaround (→ Cause 2).

Q: Only my teammates see Missing fonts on shared files

A: Figma uses each member’s local fonts, so any font installed only on the designer’s machine is invisible to others. Either install the same font on the whole team, use the Custom Fonts feature (Organization / Enterprise plan), or swap to a Web font like Google Fonts (→ Cause 4).

Q: Japanese fonts show as Missing right after XD conversion

A: Most often it’s a font name variation (Noto Sans JP ↔ Noto Sans Japanese, etc.). Check the font name on the Figma side and reassign from the picker. Pixel Fine Converter handles weight alternative expansion and Japanese baseline correction, but family name normalization isn’t implemented — so family-level drift requires manual reassignment (→ Cause 3).

Q: Figma doesn’t recognize a font I just installed

A: Figma’s cache may be holding a stale state. Fully quit Figma and restart. If that doesn’t help, try a full machine restart (→ Cause 5).

✅ Wrapping up

We covered how to fix “fonts not showing in Figma” through 5 root causes and a triage flow.

Article highlights

1. What’s actually going wrong is differences in how Figma loads fonts
2. 5 main causes: not installed locally / Font Installer / name mismatch / shared file / cache
3. The triage flow: desktop vs web app → OS install check → post-migration or not → just you or the whole team
4. Right after XD → Figma migration, font name mismatches are especially common — Pixel Fine Converter’s correction features absorb part of this
5. When nothing works, fall back to Figma’s official help

Related articles

• Japanese text fidelity guide — per-font baseline correction and rendering precision
• Figma localization complete guide — UI localization (separate axis from font handling)
• XD → Figma migration playbook — the migration process end-to-end
• 3 ways to open XD files in Figma — the entry point before migrating