Using Japanese Fonts in Figma — A Practical Guide to Adding Fonts, Troubleshooting, and Migrating from XD

“I want to use Japanese fonts in Figma but can’t figure out how to add them.” “I installed the font, but Figma doesn’t pick it up.” “The fonts I used in XD don’t appear in Figma.” — These are common pain points for designers working with Japanese typography in Figma.

Many guides on the web actually contain outdated or inaccurate information. For instance, references to “Figma Font Helper” or “Custom Fonts (Organization plan only)” don’t match Figma’s current official documentation.

This article is grounded in Figma’s official Help Center documentation (as of May 11, 2026). It walks through how to add Japanese fonts, how to troubleshoot when fonts don’t show up, and the practical notes for migrating from Adobe XD — drawing on what we’ve learned from building Pixel Fine Converter and verifying Japanese text conversion accuracy.

What you’ll get from this article

• The three routes for using Japanese fonts in Figma (local / Google Fonts / Adobe Fonts) with accurate steps
• Official troubleshooting paths when fonts don’t show up (browser vs desktop, OS-specific notes)
• XD-specific gotchas when bringing Japanese fonts into Figma
• Plugins that streamline Japanese font workflows (including Pixel Fine Converter’s font-correction features)
• How to choose between modern Japanese fonts (Noto Sans JP / Hiragino / Yu Gothic)

🗾 An overview of using Japanese fonts in Figma

Before diving into the specific steps, let’s set the foundation. Understanding the prerequisites makes troubleshooting far easier later.

Figma’s default font environment

Out of the box, Figma ships with two font sources:

• Google Fonts: The Google Fonts library is directly available inside Figma (Noto Sans JP is included).
• Apple Fonts: macOS / iOS system fonts (such as Hiragino) are available on Apple platforms.

These are usable with no extra setup. To use other fonts — Hiragino Kaku Gothic ProN (macOS), Yu Gothic, MS Gothic, Adobe Fonts — you need a separate path.

The browser version vs the desktop version

Figma has both a browser version and a desktop version, and they handle local fonts (fonts installed on your computer) differently.

The three routes for using Japanese fonts

There are essentially three ways to use Japanese fonts in Figma, each with different prerequisites:

The next section walks through the steps for each route.

📥 Three ways to add Japanese fonts

Below are the concrete steps for each of the three routes. In practice, most workflows lean on local fonts and Google Fonts. Adobe Fonts comes into play if you have a Creative Cloud subscription.

Route 1: Use a local font

Use any font installed on your computer — commercial fonts, free fonts, OS-bundled fonts (Hiragino, Yu Gothic, MS Gothic). All of these go through this route.

Steps (common to all OSes)

1. Get the font file (.ttf or .otf).
2. Install it via your OS’s font manager:
   • macOS: open the font file in Font Book → click “Install.”
   • Windows: right-click the font file → “Install.”
3. Reload Figma (browser) or restart the app (desktop).
4. Open the font picker, filter by “Installed by you,” and pick the font.

Note on supported formats

Figma reads only TrueType (.ttf) and OpenType (.otf) font files. WOFF / WOFF2 (web font formats) and older bitmap formats are not supported. When buying commercial fonts, check that the license includes TTF or OTF deliverables.

Route 2: Use Google Fonts (no setup needed)

Figma’s font picker includes the entire Google Fonts library by default. No installation, no settings — just type the font name. Common Japanese options:

The big advantage: whoever opens your file sees the same fonts, because they’re served as web fonts.

Route 3: Connect Adobe Fonts

If you have an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription, Adobe Fonts becomes available in Figma. Japanese fonts in Adobe Fonts include Kozuka Gothic, Ten Mincho, Source Han Sans, and TA-Hougan, among others.

Steps

1. Install the Adobe Creative Cloud desktop app.
2. Activate the Japanese fonts you want to use in Adobe Fonts.
3. Restart Figma (desktop) or restart FigmaAgent (browser).
4. The fonts appear in Figma’s font picker.

🛠️ Troubleshooting when Japanese fonts don’t show up

“I added the font but Figma isn’t showing it.” — Here are the typical causes and fixes, organized by symptom.

Symptom 1: A “fonts not found” alert appears

If a “Missing fonts” warning appears as soon as you open a file, the file uses fonts that aren’t installed in your current environment.

What to do

• Follow Figma’s official guide: Missing font alert in Figma Design to identify which fonts are unavailable.
• Install the unavailable fonts (route 1 or 3).
• To swap them in bulk, use the “Replace fonts” action inside the warning modal.

Symptom 2: Local fonts don’t show up in the browser version

The most common cause: Figma font installer (FigmaAgent) isn’t installed or isn’t running.

What to do

1. Install FigmaAgent from Figma’s official Downloads page.
2. Restart your computer (or start FigmaAgent manually).
3. Reload the Figma page.

Symptom 3: Fonts don’t show up in the desktop version

When fonts you’ve installed at the OS level aren’t appearing in Figma desktop, check these in order:

1. Restart Figma — the font cache may be stale.
2. Rebuild the OS font index — on Windows, check whether “Windows Fonts Cache Service” is running, and enable it if not, then restart.
3. Check the font file itself — corrupted font files won’t be picked up. Verify in Font Book / Windows Fonts that the font renders normally.
4. Confirm the format — formats other than .ttf / .otf (like .woff / .woff2) won’t load.

Symptom 4: Subscription-based fonts (Adobe Fonts / other fonts) don’t show up

For subscription-based font services, integration and authentication state are usually the cause.

What to do

• Adobe Fonts: Is Creative Cloud running? Is the font activated?
• Other subscription-based fonts: Contact each service’s support to confirm Figma integration availability.

Symptom 5: Japanese characters get garbled or render in unexpected glyphs

Often this comes from Figma’s CJK font fallback behavior.

According to Figma’s official help “Add text in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean,” Figma automatically falls back to Noto fonts when characters aren’t supported by the chosen font. The same page notes that for CJK users specifically, “Figma may choose the wrong version of a character,” and recommends manually setting the correct font.

What to do

• Select the affected text layer and explicitly set the font (don’t rely on automatic fallback).
• When Simplified / Traditional Chinese / Japanese / Korean are mixed, use the matching Noto font (Noto Sans SC / TC / JP / KR) for each language.

🌐 If you want to localize Figma’s menus and UI

So far we’ve focused on using Japanese fonts inside design content. A separate question is whether Figma’s own menus and UI panels can be displayed in Japanese — and yes, this has been officially supported since 2024.

The setup steps and notes are covered in a separate article.

→ Details: Using Figma in Japanese — A Complete Guide to Language Settings, Menu Localization, and UI Coverage

🔄 Notes when migrating Japanese fonts from XD to Figma

If you’re moving designs from Adobe XD to Figma, there are several Japanese-font-specific gotchas worth knowing about. These observations come from building Pixel Fine Converter and verifying Japanese text conversion accuracy.

Note 1: XD fonts don’t appear in Figma

The text rendered fine in XD, but Figma flags it as “Missing fonts.” Three causes are typical:

Note 2: Japanese text looks slightly different

XD and Figma use different text rendering engines internally, so even with the same font and fontSize, the visual result is slightly different. Differences in baseline position and glyph weight are particularly noticeable in Japanese fonts.

This is a deeper technical topic and is covered in a dedicated article.

→ Details: How accurately can Japanese text be converted from XD to Figma?

The short version:

• Baseline position is correctable by tooling (Pixel Fine Converter holds correction coefficients per font, validated against 5 fonts × 42 cells of measured data).
• Glyph appearance can’t be corrected (it stems from rendering-engine philosophy differences).
• MS Gothic is special (a Windows 95-era bitmap font, poorly suited for modern high-DPI displays).

Note 3: Phasing out MS Gothic

If your existing assets lean on MS Gothic, swapping everything at once tends to cause layout drift. A phased migration is more practical.

• Don’t use MS Gothic in new work (replace with Yu Gothic / Noto Sans JP).
• Tolerate it for existing assets (the rendering differs, but data accuracy is preserved).
• Batch-replace during a major redesign (use Find & Replace).

Note 4: Use Pixel Fine Converter for smoother XD migrations

When converting XD files into Figma, the converter’s accuracy is what determines whether font information and layout structure carry over cleanly. Pixel Fine Converter offers:

→ More on Pixel Fine Converter’s Japanese font handling: Features: Japanese fonts

🔌 Plugins to streamline Japanese font workflows

Figma Community has several plugins that smooth out Japanese font workflows. Each has a different strength — pick by use case.

1. Japanese Font Picker — Visualize Japanese font choices

“Japanese Font Picker” lets you preview already-installed Japanese fonts in a list with actual character samples (rather than just font names). This is helpful when picking among many similar Japanese typefaces.

The trade-off: only fonts already installed on your computer appear in the preview. You can’t try fonts you haven’t installed yet.

2. JP Font Switcher — Speed up font swaps

“JP Font Switcher” lets you batch-switch Japanese text across a design to another font. Listing, searching, and applying fonts are all centralized in one panel — useful for rebrands or bulk updates.

3. Pixel Fine Converter — Preserve Japanese accuracy when migrating from XD

When the task is moving designs from XD to Figma, Pixel Fine Converter is in a different category from font-picker plugins. It carries the entire structure — including font assignments — across to Figma, and the Free plan ships measurement-based baseline correction for six major fonts.

For “I want to bring an XD design with Japanese fonts into Figma” workflows, this complements rather than competes with the font-picking plugins above.

🎨 Choosing between Hiragino, Yu Gothic, and Noto Sans JP

Figma supports a wide range of Japanese fonts, but modern design work tends to converge on three gothic families. Here’s how to choose:

Recommendations by use case

• macOS-only project: Hiragino Kaku Gothic ProN — the default choice, high quality.
• Windows-only project: Yu Gothic UI / Yu Gothic.
• Cross-platform / shared with clients: Noto Sans JP (Figma preset, environment-independent).
• Web-distributed: Noto Sans JP — strongest fit (already deliverable through Google Fonts).

About the official defaults

Figma’s official “Add text in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean” page mentions these CJK defaults:

• macOS Japanese: Osaka, Hiragino
• Windows Japanese: MS Gothic, MS Mincho

That said, MS Gothic is a Windows 95-era bitmap font and isn’t well-suited to modern high-DPI displays. For new designs, replacing it with Yu Gothic UI or Noto Sans JP is a better default.

💬 Frequently asked questions

Q: What’s “Figma Font Helper”? Do I need to install it?

A: Some blog posts use the name “Figma Font Helper,” but the official name is “Figma font installer” (also known as FigmaAgent). It’s a tool you need to use local fonts in the browser version of Figma. The desktop app has it built in. You can download it from Figma’s official Downloads page.

Q: Are custom fonts limited to the Organization plan?

A: It depends on which “custom fonts” you mean. The general method of installing a font on your OS and using it in Figma is available on every plan — see Figma’s official “Add a font to Figma” (“Available on any plan”). The organization-wide shared custom font feature (officially titled “Upload custom fonts to an organization”) is a separate feature limited to Organization / Enterprise plans. These two are commonly confused in older articles.

Q: Japanese text gets garbled. What should I do?

A: This is often Figma’s CJK font fallback behavior. Figma automatically falls back to Noto fonts for unsupported characters, and the official help acknowledges that “CJK may pick the wrong character.” Select the affected text and explicitly set the font. When mixing languages, use the language-specific Noto font (Noto Sans SC / TC / JP / KR) for each block.

Q: Local fonts don’t work in the browser version.

A: The most likely cause is that Figma font installer (FigmaAgent) isn’t installed or isn’t running. Install it from Figma’s official Downloads page and restart your computer. The desktop app doesn’t have this issue.

Q: Fonts that worked in XD aren’t found in Figma.

A: There are three usual causes. (1) The font isn’t installed on the machine where Figma runs — install it locally. (2) Adobe Fonts isn’t activated for that font — activate it in Creative Cloud. (3) Font name discrepancies (e.g., “Hiragino Sans” vs “Hiragino Kaku Gothic”) — pick a similar font as a substitute. See the XD migration notes section above.

🎯 Wrapping up

We’ve walked through using Japanese fonts in Figma, organized around five axes: how to add them, how to troubleshoot, what to know when migrating from XD, what plugins to combine, and how to choose modern fonts.

Recap

Japanese font work in Figma comes together when accurate official information × symptom-based troubleshooting × right plugin for the job are all in place. We hope this guide serves as a practical foundation for your Japanese design work in Figma.

Related pages

• Using Figma in Japanese — A Complete Guide — UI language localization (menus / display)
• How accurately can Japanese text be converted from XD to Figma? — A deep dive into XD → Figma rendering accuracy
• XD → Figma migration: a practical guide — Concrete steps and preparation after deciding to migrate
• Three ways to open Adobe XD files in Figma — Routes for bringing XD files into Figma
• Features: Japanese fonts — Per-font correction details in Pixel Fine Converter