Changing fonts in ggplot2

Question

Once upon a time, I changed my ggplot2 font using using windowsFonts(Times=windowsFont(\"TT Times New Roman\")) to change it. Now I can\'t get it

Answer 1

Another option is to use showtext package which supports more types of fonts (TrueType, OpenType, Type 1, web fonts, etc.) and more graphics devices, and avoids using external software such as Ghostscript.

# install.packages('showtext', dependencies = TRUE)
library(showtext)

Import some Google Fonts

# https://fonts.google.com/featured/Superfamilies
font_add_google("Montserrat", "Montserrat")
font_add_google("Roboto", "Roboto")

Load font from the current search path into showtext

# Check the current search path for fonts
font_paths()    
#> [1] "C:\\Windows\\Fonts"

# List available font files in the search path
font_files()    
#>   [1] "AcadEref.ttf"                                
#>   [2] "AGENCYB.TTF"                           
#> [428] "pala.ttf"                                    
#> [429] "palab.ttf"                                   
#> [430] "palabi.ttf"                                  
#> [431] "palai.ttf"

# syntax: font_add(family = "", regular = "/path/to/font/file")
font_add("Palatino", "pala.ttf")

font_families()
#> [1] "sans"         "serif"        "mono"         "wqy-microhei"
#> [5] "Montserrat"   "Roboto"       "Palatino"

## automatically use showtext for new devices
showtext_auto() 

Plot: need to open Windows graphics device as showtext does not work well with RStudio built-in graphics device

# https://github.com/yixuan/showtext/issues/7
# https://journal.r-project.org/archive/2015-1/qiu.pdf
# `x11()` on Linux, or `quartz()` on Mac OS
windows()

myFont1 <- "Montserrat"
myFont2 <- "Roboto"
myFont3 <- "Palatino"

library(ggplot2)

a <- ggplot(mtcars, aes(x = wt, y = mpg)) + 
  geom_point() +
  ggtitle("Fuel Efficiency of 32 Cars") +
  xlab("Weight (x1000 lb)") + ylab("Miles per Gallon") +
  theme(text = element_text(size = 16, family = myFont1)) +
  annotate("text", 4, 30, label = 'Palatino Linotype',
           family = myFont3, size = 10) +
  annotate("text", 1, 11, label = 'Roboto', hjust = 0,
           family = myFont2, size = 10) 

## On-screen device
print(a) 

## Save to PNG 
ggsave("plot_showtext.png", plot = a, 
       type = 'cairo',
       width = 6, height = 6, dpi = 150)  

## Save to PDF
ggsave("plot_showtext.pdf", plot = a, 
       device = cairo_pdf,
       width = 6, height = 6, dpi = 150)  

## turn showtext off if no longer needed
showtext_auto(FALSE) 

Edit: another workaround to use showtext in RStudio. Run the following code at the beginning of the R session (source)

trace(grDevices::png, exit = quote({
    showtext::showtext_begin()
}), print = FALSE)