Welcome to the first installment of Windows Mobile Tips and Tricks! This is another recurring post that we are gonna start, and it will contain some kind of cool or new thing to do with Windows Mobile that you may not have known how to do before we showed you!
On today’s episode, we will show you how to change your system font to a completely different one on Windows Mobile 6.1, though the instructions are the same regardless of the version that you are using.
Below are the simple instructions, and it all begins with the pre-requisites:
1-A Windows Mobile powered device-Either Pocket PC or Smartphone
2-A Truetype style font(they end with file extension .ttf)
3-5 minutes of time
Alright now here is how to do it!
1)-Connect your device to your computer, and let Activesync do it’s thing(until the green double-arrow icon in your tray stops spinning).
2)-Click on [Explore], then on “Windows Mobile Based Device”, then on “Windows”. If you cannot see the “Windows” folder, goto the top of the window and click [Tools] then [Folder Options] then the [View] tab, then scroll down a bit until you find a checkbox that says-”Show Hidden Files and Folders” and make sure that it is checked(or dotted if the case may be).
3)-Now, leave that window open, and go and grab you font. Right click on the font file itself and scroll down to [Rename]. In the field, type “Tahoma” then [OK]. Now, copy that file that you just renamed, and paste it to another directory(such as the desktop so that it is easy to get back to), and rename it to-”TahomaBD” and click [OK].
4)-Now click and drag, or copy and paste those 2 files into the “Windows” folder that you have open from earlier, tell it [Yes] to overwrite the existing files if needed.
5)-Now, soft-reset your device and voila! You have a nice shiny new system font! Wonderful! Now, you may be wondering how to get your old one back, and it is indeed very simple.
6)-To restore the Tahoma font, either download a copy of it from the internet(note that it is NOTE public domain), or navigate to your computers “Font” folder and simply copy it to your desktop, and rename and copy it as above, soft-reset again and BAM, back to OEM status you go! You can also just Hard-reset if you get desperate.
Well, thats it! Quite simple eh? It really adds a great deal of custimization to Windows Mobile that you didnt have before.
