View Categories

Feast Plugin: Disable Theme Google Fonts

Implements the Manually disable Google fonts tutorial without editing code.

All sites in 2021 and beyond should use the System Font setting in the Feast Plugin to override the theme fonts, which eliminates:

  • font-related CLS
  • pagespeed-related issues due to font downloads
  • European GDPR violations from using Google-hosted Google Fonts
  • missing character issues with fraction conversions in certain fonts
  • enhance user experience by using a default familiar, legible font used by all devices

This will fall-back to the default font in the theme.

Recommendation: unless you have a compelling reason for doing this, outside of what you've read from us, don't use this.

This also removes the theme's Google Fonts section from the customizer.

Jump to:

System Fonts

We recommend everyone use the System Fonts setting in the Feast Plugin, which automatically disables theme fonts and replaces them with a performance-driven font set.

Why disable custom fonts

The Google Fonts implementation has changed over the years, and the current pagespeed insights report throws a flag for how Google Fonts were implemented into the themes years ago.

The simplest solution to resolve this is to simply disable Google Fonts. Say bye-bye to custom fonts, which have a questionable benefit to the reader, and thereby improve your pagespeed.

CLS is a major issue in 2020 and beyond, and choosing the wrong Google Font can cause significant CLS issues.

Why not to disable custom fonts

Custom fonts are a part of the overall branding of your website, and contribute to the overall first impressions readers have.

Don't disable Google Fonts if the benefit you get from the custom font outweighs the pagespeed penalty. That's a decision only you can make.

In our opinion, you can worry about this once you've reached a level of income where you can afford to pay someone to handle it for you.

Implementing an updated version of Google Fonts

We haven't found any tutorials online simple enough to implement via the plugin.

Due to the complexity number of decisions to be made about which fonts and subsets and font-weights you need personally, the only way to implement a modern, up-to-date webfont is either to:

  1. Download and self-host the font
  2. Make a complex set of decisions to determine which weights and subsets you need, then implement it

This is outside the scope of what we're able to offer.

Self hosted fonts

Self-hosting fonts uses third-party tools we haven't been able to test or verify adequately. It also comes with some very complex research on font licenses and what can and can't be used, and how attribution works.

At this time, we're in no position to support or make recommendations on how to implement self-hosted fonts.

See: why self-hosting fonts isn't recommended by WP Rocket

Further reading

This is honestly a waste of time for bloggers, but if you have nothing better to do, here's some reading:

We haven't verified and don't recommend or support any of the above links.

I can't stress this enough - this is a deep, dark rabbit hole that's going to make you frustrated. There are no easy solutions to this right now.

Unless you're making enough disposable income to hire a developer who can implement this for you, do not waste your time with this.

Cook'd Pro

The Cook'd Pro theme menu uses FontAwesome in the search bar, which gets removed when you enable system fonts.

To solve this, we recommend using the Modern Menu on desktop as well as mobile.

Update: filter

As of Feast Plugin 5.7.2, the checkbox in the Feast Plugin settings page has been removed, and disabled. You can still enable it using the following filter, added to your Code Snippets plugin:

add_filter( 'feast_disable_google_fonts', '__return_true' );

Note: All sites should now be using the System Fonts setting, which is an enhancement of this feature.

Was this helpful?

  • Happy
  • Sad