Quick start

The showtext package in R allows you to easily use custom fonts in R graphics, including plots created with base R, ggplot2, and other graphics systems.

It provides a simple interface to use system fonts and web fonts in R plots, making it easy to create publication-quality graphs with custom typography.

✍️ author → Yixuan Qiu

📘 documentation → CRAN

⭐️ more than 500 stars on github

Installation

To get started with showtext, you can install it directly from CRAN using the install.packages function:

install.packages("showtext")

Basic usage

The showtext package allows you to use custom fonts in your R graphics by loading font files and enabling showtext rendering.

Here’s a basic example:

library(showtext)
font_add_google("Pacifico", "pacifico")
showtext_auto()

plot(1:10, main = "Custom Font Plot", family = "pacifico")

Key features

→ Loading Fonts

showtext can load fonts from various sources, including system fonts, font files, and Google Fonts.

font_add_google(): simplifies adding Google Fonts by fetching and registering fonts directly from the Google Fonts repository using just the font family name.

font_add_google("Roboto", "roboto")

→ Automatic Font Rendering

The showtext_auto() function enables automatic font rendering for all graphics devices.

showtext_auto()

→ Supporting Various Graphics Systems

showtext works with base R graphics, ggplot2, and other graphics systems.

ggplot(mtcars, aes(wt, mpg)) +
   geom_point() +
   labs(title = "Custom Font in ggplot2") +
   theme(text = element_text(family = "roboto", size = 16))

→ Unicode Support

showtext provides full Unicode support, allowing you to use non-Latin characters and symbols easily.

Example:

font_add_google("Noto Sans JP", "notosans")
plot(1:10, main = "日本語のタイトル", family = "notosans")

Gallery of showtext examples

Small multiple area chart

A small multiple is a series of small similar graphs or charts, allowing them to be easily compared. Here is an example with an area chart.

Density plot map

A density plot map is a map where the density of a variable is represented with a color scale.

Double ridgeline plot

A double ridgeline plot is a combination of two ridgeline plots, next to each other.

Interactive table

An interactive table is a table where the user can interact with the data, for example by filtering or sorting it.

Line chart

A line chart with labels at the end of each line.

Lollipop plot

A lollipop plot is a combination of a bar chart and a dot plot, where the length of the bar represents the value of the variable.

Radial chart

A radar chart is a graphical method of displaying multivariate data in the form of a two-dimensional chart of three or more quantitative variables represented on axes starting from the same point.