How to Change the Font in Safari on iPhone and iPad

You found a site with tiny, spindly text, went looking for a “font” setting in Safari, and came up empty. That’s because there isn’t one. Websites decide which fonts they use, and Safari on iPhone and iPad respects that choice.

There are still ways to get text you can read comfortably. Here are the built-in options, what each one really does, and how to change the font on every website.

Option 1: Safari Reader (built in, some pages only)

Reader strips a page down to the article text and lets you choose the font.

1. Open an article in Safari.
2. Tap the page menu button on the left of the address bar.
3. Tap Show Reader. If it’s greyed out, the page doesn’t support Reader.
4. Tap the page menu button again to choose a font, text size and background (white, sepia, grey or black).

Good for: long articles and news stories.

Limits: Reader only works on pages Safari recognizes as articles. Menus, search results, shopping sites, forums and web apps stay as they are. You also have to turn it on again for most pages, and the font list is short, with nothing designed for dyslexia or low vision.

Option 2: Page zoom (built in, every page, size only)

The page menu button also has zoom controls: tap the small A to shrink the page or the large A to enlarge it. To set a default for every site, open Settings › Apps › Safari › Page Zoom.

Good for: making everything bigger in one go.

Limits: zoom scales the whole layout, not just the text, so wide pages can overflow the screen. It never changes the font itself: thin, low-contrast typefaces stay thin and low-contrast, just larger. See our full guide to making text bigger in Safari.

Option 3: Installing fonts (doesn’t affect websites)

The App Store has apps that install fonts onto your iPhone, and you can see them in Settings › General › Fonts. Those fonts only appear in apps that include a font picker, such as Pages, Keynote or some email apps.

Websites don’t use them. A web page asks for its own fonts, and Safari doesn’t substitute yours. This is the most common dead end people hit when searching for how to change Safari’s font.

Option 4: A Safari extension (every page, any font)

Since iOS 15, Safari on iPhone and iPad has supported web extensions, the same kind of add-ons desktop browsers have. A font extension can restyle the text on any page as it loads, which is the only way to change fonts everywhere.

Here’s how it works with FontFlex:

1. Install FontFlex from the App Store and open it once.
2. Go to Settings › Apps › Safari › Extensions, tap FontFlex, turn it on and set All Websites to Allow.
3. Back in the FontFlex app, pick a font and size.
4. Open any website. The new font is already applied, and it stays that way on every page and every visit.

Why Safari asks for permission

When you turn the extension on, Safari warns that it can “read and alter webpages.” Every extension that changes how pages look needs that access, because it has to reach the text to restyle it. FontFlex uses it only on your device to change fonts, and it doesn’t track the sites you visit. You can also limit it to specific websites if you prefer.

Which option should you use?

You want to…	Use
Read one long article more comfortably	Safari Reader
Make everything a bit bigger	Page Zoom
Use a font in Pages or Keynote	A font installer app
Change the font on every website	A Safari extension such as FontFlex

Tips for picking a font

• Choose a clear sans serif such as Atkinson Hyperlegible, Verdana or San Francisco if thin or decorative site fonts tire your eyes.
• Try a dyslexia-friendly font like OpenDyslexic or Lexend if letters seem to move or swap. Our guide to the best fonts for dyslexia compares them.
• Increase size and spacing too. A new font at the same cramped size only helps so much.
• Use profiles to keep a bold, large font for news sites and something more stylish elsewhere.