Sketchbook, iOS 14 and Custom Fonts

[Anonymous]

As numerous other users have posted on this forum, the font picker in Sketchbook for iOS cannot currently access user-installed fonts on iOS 14. I'm writing as the co-developer of the iOS font management app iFont. We've been contacted by a number of users who've lost access to their custom fonts after upgrading to iOS 14, and I thought it might be helpful to share my view on what Sketchbook's developers need to do to fix this issue.

Suggested actions for Sketchbook's developers:

1. Add the Font entitement to the Sketchbook app, making sure to select 'Use Installed Fonts'.

2. Adopt UIFontPickerViewController in place of the custom font selection UI included in Sketchbook at present. (Developer team: please note the font picker can be embedded as a child view controller as normal. It doesn't require modal presentation, so your current approach of embedding the font picker in a popover would not need to change).

Lastly, from a compatibility perspective, the system font picker was added in iOS 13, so the existing font picker would need to be kept around for users on iOS 12 and earlier.

I hope the above is clear - and apologies if it seems presumptuous to provide instructions. That the changes needed are fairly straightforward, and iOS 14 has been out for two months, made me wonder if the issue wasn't understood by the development team.

The background

If it's of interest to readers, I've tried to summarise the technical background to this issue below.

Prior to iOS 13, the situation on iOS was as follows:

1. Apps could request a list of all installed fonts from the operating system without needing any special entitlements.

2. Users could install new fonts using configuration profiles.

In iOS 13, Apple added a new application programming interface (API) for installing fonts. The new API has a critical limitation - namely it can only be used by apps for fonts that come 'bundled' as part of the app. In addition, iOS 13 did not include fonts installed via this API in the list of all installed fonts given to other apps by default. To allow users to select these fonts, apps had to use the new system font picker, which runs in a separate process and does have access to the full list of installed fonts. Fonts installed via configuration profiles were not impacted by this change, so the situation was as follows:

1. Apps could request a list of pre-installed fonts and fonts installed via configuration profiles from the operating system without needing any special entitlements.

2. Apps could access fonts installed via the new API by adding an 'entitlement' to use installed fonts, and then using the system font picker.

3. Users could install new fonts using configuration profiles or apps that supported the new API.

iOS 14 went further, and now hides fonts installed via configuration profiles from the list of installed fonts unless apps' developers had added the necessary entitlement for their apps to access user-installed fonts. Since Sketchbook presumably hasn't done this, users have lost access to any fonts they'd installed via configuration profiles after updating.

Essentially Sketchbook doesn't appear to have been updated to deal with the changes introduced to fonts in iOS 13 and iOS 14. I'm hopefully it will be soon.

[david.lau]

I have alerted our Development team of this post.  Thanks so much!

[Anonymous]

Great, thank you!

One area I omitted to mention is the CTFontManagerRequestFonts() API, which was added to the CoreText framework in iOS 13. Apps can use this API to request access fonts: if the font's installed (by any method), the operating system makes the font available, following which it can be created as normal via the UIFont API. As such it's helpful when opening documents with a custom font set. The best documentation on this API is in the presentation from WWDC 2019.

[Anonymous]

We're still getting some users contact us about using custom fonts in Sketchbook on iOS 14. Until now we've advised any users who contacted us that Autodesk is working on an update, and that this should be out soon.

However, this update hasn't materialised yet.

With respect to the development team, who I appreciate will have other competing commitments, this issue has been apparent for half a year now, so I find the idea that a fix is being worked on with any urgency a little hard to believe. I'm really keen to be proven wrong though, and look forward to the eventual update (and, as per my post above, am happy to provide any assistance if needed). Until then, with regret, we'll advise iFont users that Sketchbook is no longer compatible with custom fonts, and that users should switch to another app if this is a dealbreaker for them.

[Anonymous]

I’m currently in the process of entirely switching over everything I do to another app because of the dev teams failure to fix this relatively simple issue, especially when an iFont developer so kindly posted a literal paint by number with instructions to fix the issue. 

[Anonymous]

Any update on this?  I want my fonts back!

[Anonymous]

Any updates on that issue? I would really appreciate to see this fix available soon since it hinders me to use Sketchbook for many of my projects 😞

[Anonymous]

I agree with Peter above. I’m out of here. The dev team, not to mention the preposterously bad customer service front end seem to have no interest in patching this problem and resolving a serious issue with functionality. Seriously, do these guys realize who their competitors are? You might be forgiven for thinking they’d want to resolve relatively simple problems efficiently and quickly. But mistaken you would be. There’s no reason this shouldn’t be rectified by now, and even fewer excuses for the complete lack of updates, at the very least. Anything at all you’d like to add to this discussion, David?

[Anonymous]

I am interested in font development in the context of web design. I have recently started teaching UX and I am constantly looking for good materials, courses or internships. By the way, I want to share with you this site https://masterbundles.com/best-masculine-fonts/ (if suddenly there are newbies here like me). This resource helped me a lot with my first practical exercise of fonts design creating.

[Anonymous]

Hi David…Are you still there?  Has this issue moved up the priority list yet?  It does feel like Autodesk is willing to leave Sketchbook as a dinosaur while other drawing apps move forward.  I hope that isn’t the case because I liked sketchbooks interface better.

[david.lau]

Just an FYI!  A new company will working on a new update for SketchBook.

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/sketchbook-forum/the-future-of-sketchbook/td-p/10411917

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/sketchbook-forum/heads-up-this-forum-will-change-to-read-only-mode/td...