Last week’s update rolled out a new font face across all of Zwift. And while it’s grown on me, I’m also seeing a lot of Zwifters saying they prefer the old font.
If you’d like the old font back, here’s a simple hack for Mac and PC users, from Zwifter Youry_Pershin. (This was originally shared in the Zwift forum.)
Disclaimer: this hack involves replacing some of the files in your Zwift install, much like some Zwifters did back in 2018 to pave New York’s glass roads. This means that future Zwift updates could overwrite your workaround, forcing you to do it again. It also means if you do it wrong, you could mess up your Zwift install and be forced to reinstall the program.
First, you’ll need the old fonts and related files. You can grab those from Youry’s Google drive here.
Mac Instructions
Make sure Zwift is not currently open, then do the following:
- In Library/Application Support/Zwift/assets/fonts
make a backup of the font.wad file in this folder
replace the file with font.wad from the Google drive linked above - In Library/Application Support/Zwift/assets/Noesis/Blend_Data
make a backup of the noesis.wad file in this folder
replace the file with noesis.wad from the Google drive linked above - In Library/Application Support/Zwift/data/fonts
make a backup of all .ztx files in there (8 in total)
replace all files with the .ztx files from the Google drive linked above
Open Zwift and you should have the old font back.
PC Instructions
Same as above, except Zwift is installed in a different folder on PC.
Make sure Zwift is not currently open, then do the following:
- In Program Files (x86)/Zwift/assets/fonts
make a backup of the font.wad file in this folder
replace the file with font.wad from the Google drive linked above - In Program Files (x86)/Zwift/assets/Noesis/Blend_Data
make a backup of the noesis.wad file in this folder
replace the file with noesis.wad from the Google drive linked above - In Program Files (x86)/Zwift/data/fonts
make a backup of all .ztx files in there (8 in total)
replace all files with the .ztx files from the Google drive linked above
Open Zwift and you should have the old font back.
Questions or Comments?
Post below!
Really?
Yes.
Its not trivial, its kind of important to be able to read things on-screen especially when you need information quickly and your brain is processing lots of information at once… such as in a zwift race. Having a clear, legible font is just basic common sense. The new font fails to deliver. Its not just a matter of subjective preference, people don’t like it because its literally hard to decipher what some characters are meant to be. It fails in the most basic tests of a font – is it readable.
Is there a way to do this for iPhone, iPad, Apple TV?
This means that we could potentially use our own fonts. Im pretty partial to some Wingdings or maybe good ol Comic SanSerif. Its just a font and no, the ‘1’ does not look like a ‘7’, its looks like a ‘1’ Get back to more important things like where are the new virtual roads? Im bored of Tempers Fugget-about-it! 😎
Not sure why they thought this font would be better and many, many other things they should be working on to improve the experience.
Easy answer- they don’t have any staff with a lick of user experience design experience and don’t care what their customers think.
I’m not the brightest MBA but I’ll take a crack at it. I’d say by this point they have acquired, for practical purposes, all of the legacy cyclists that they will. They also have relatively little real competition. So the threat of fleeing the platform remains small. For all new users, the experience is still, new. They are happy. So massive development has poor ROI unless they can get away with raising prices. Otherwise keep the the status quo and keep collecting $15/mo per user until there is a strong signal to change.
Will this hack stay after next zwift update?
probably not, need noesis.wad repack (as minimum)
The update was a nightmare after the hack. Zwift crashed on my PC and never started up. Neither when I put back the old font files. Needed a complete uninstall and new clean install with a long update. Up and running again, but with the ugly new font. For me too much hassle to do that over and over again after every single update! Why dont we get to choose the font in settings? Would be nice, because readability is just bad with the new one.
I thought the new font outrage was overblown but found myself tripped up by the small font for critical information in the odd new desktop UI when I picked a pace partner the other day. Thought I was picking a 2.1 w/kg partner for an easy spin-up before an event and it turned out to be a 2.7 w/kg. I stuck with the higher-than-desired one, which gave me a convenient excuse for the day’s underperformance.
It appears to have been broken by the 1.29 update. I tried redoing the hack but that now causes Zwift to crash before getting to the homescreen. The only fix seemed to be to reinstall and live with the awful new font. I can’t help but think this is deliberate on Zwift’s part.
Re-download from same link, Youry updated to 105233.
This hack doesn’t work anymore. This afternoon I spent a few minutes coming up with a command file to automate the copying of the original style font files into the appropriate directories on a PC/laptop, but when I logged into Zwift there was no text being displayed. Fortunately, I also made sure the new font files were backed up before overwriting/replacing them. Easy to revert back! Still, I would’ve liked to have been able to go back to the old fonts. Stylistically they were cleaner. I believe they have fixed the newer ones to make the ones and sevens more… Read more »
Also, the link to the gentlemen Youry’s Google drive doesn’t work anymore… Possibly IP issues with using Zwift’s fonts?!?
Hi, do you know if i could use Zwift font for my personal site?
-Sam
Doubtful. I think it was developed specifically for Zwift.