Install Meiryo Font Windows 10

[Grimarlon Varner]

WhenWindows is upgraded from older versions of Windows to currently supported versions of Windows, previously available fonts might no longer be available post-upgrade. Many of the fonts that were previously shipped with Windows were moved to the optional features of Windows to:

optional fonts aren't enabled by default. As a result, these fonts are missing from the system. If documents were created using the missing fonts, these documents might display differently in the updated version of Windows.

If these fonts are needed, you can add them back to your system via optional features. The removal of these fonts is a permanent change in behavior for Windows, and it will remain this way in future releases.

To add the fonts associated with a language and then switch to that language, first open the Language & region pane in the Settings app by selecting the following link:

The desired language should now be available in the drop-down menu next to Windows display language. Drop down the Windows display language menu and select the desired language.

Below Windows display language the message Windows needs to sign you out in order to apply your new display language. is displayed. Select the Sign out button to finish applying the language including the additional language fonts.

The desired language should now be available in the drop-down menu below Windows display language. Drop down the Windows display language menu and select the desired language.

If fonts associated with a language are needed but aren't needed across the entire system, then that language should be added to the user profile as a supplemental font. Adding a font as a supplemental font doesn't require the user switch to that language. Adding a font as a supplemental font can be done via the Settings app.

The navigation steps, UI elements, and UI text in this section are based on the latest version of Windows 11 with the latest cumulative update installed. For other versions of Windows 11 that are currently supported or don't have the latest cumulative update, some of the navigation steps, UI elements, and UI text might be different. For example, the Optional features pane might be located under Settings > Apps.

The navigation steps, UI elements, and UI text in this section are based on Windows 10 22H2 with the latest cumulative update installed. For other versions of Windows 10 that are currently supported or don't have the latest cumulative update, some of the navigation steps, UI elements, and UI text might be different. For example, the Optional features pane might be located under Settings > Apps > Apps & features.

When you upgrade from the Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 8.1 operating system to Windows 10, certain fonts are no longer available by default post-upgrade. To reduce the operating system footprint, improve performance, and optimize disk space usage, we moved many of the fonts that were previously shipped with prior versions of Windows to the optional features of Windows 10. If you install a fresh instance of Windows 10, or upgrade an older version of Windows to Windows 10, these optional features are not enabled by default. As a result, these fonts appear to be missing from the system.

If you want to use these fonts, you can enable the optional feature to add these back to your system. Be aware that this is a permanent change in behavior for Windows 10, and it will remain this way in future releases.

If you want to use fonts in an optional feature but don't need to search web pages, edit documents, or use apps in the associated language, you can install the optional font features manually without changing your language settings.

After installing optional font features, the fonts should appear in the Fonts control panel and in font-picker lists. Some apps might not detect the change until the app is re-started. If you still don't see some of the fonts, sign out and sign back in. A reboot should not be required.

If you want to use the fonts from the optional feature and you know that you will want to view Web pages, edit documents, or use apps in the language associated with that feature, add that language into your user profile. You do this the Settings app.

I am working on a japanese website and have a hard time finding a font which looks good in japanese. I was surprised that so few fonts seem to exist for japanese. My team has contacted several web font providers without much success. Only one company could offer a web font for japanese but it was 35 megabytes which is far to big for the clients to download to their browsers.

Web-font for Japanese, though there are few providers exist, is not really practical as you found the size of the font data is too big to download. Usually Japanese font has 8,000-16,000 glyph so making new fonts means you need to make at least 8,000 glyph, which is pretty heavy task. As a result of it, there are very few variations in Japanese fonts, and Japanese users also care about fonts less than Latin-character users.

Most Japanese websites use default font sets provided on Windows or Mac. The latest ones are Meiryo and Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro. For older versions such like Windows XP, it is good to add former default fonts MS Gothic(or MS Mincho)/Osaka.

Here's an answer in 2021 after my research and from my experience living and working in Japan. I like this article, though it is in Japanese so I'll do my best to summarize. Here are what some major companies are using in Japan:

Something I learned working here: some Japanese prefer Gothic or other fonts over Mincho fonts, as Mincho looks more "Chinese" according to some. None of the companies above use Mincho as evidence to that. Like it or not, I guess that's something to keep in mind when branding.

This is an old thread but for anyone doing research on this now, you should note that Meiryo is no longer a standard font loaded with Windows. Since Windows 10, the new default font is Yu Gothic. You can still install Meiryo manually however. Please see this article

I am no font/design expert, but just about every Japanese PC should have basic Latin fonts like the ones you mentioned installed, so they will work. But those fonts give a kind of Western look to Japanese characters. If you want to use fonts that Japanese sites typically use I would start by browsing some of the more popular Japanese sites and using things like Firebug or the Chrome developer tools to examine the CSS and see what fonts they reference. For example, yahoo.co.jp currently has this CSS:

The "gothic" typeface fonts seem fairly popular these days: on Windows, fonts like MS Gothic, MS PGothic, etc. Ming typeface is also widely used. These are the default browser font settings for Firefox on my Japanese Windows machine:

BTW, the "Osaka" font was a standard font on Japanese Macs in the 90s. Unless you want that "retro" feel, is highly recommended to use "Hiragino Sans" (not Kaku Gothic that's deprecated) for macOS and iOS devices for a consistent and modern look and better legibility. Also Hiragino Sans has far more font weights (10) than Kaku Gothic (only 2).

For whom may come in the future, there is a great (long and deep) article on this very matter written by a japanese copywriter: The Most Comprehensive Guide to Web Typography in Japanese or in the archive.org, because there is apparently an issue on mhdigital.

'Noto Sans CJK JP' is also available for Ubuntu linux. It is provided as an official package "fonts-noto-cjk". Still manual installation is required, it is expected to have it installed on Japanese Ubuntu machines.

Ok, i could solve the issue. After installing the windows language pack and the writing pack for japanese Meiryo shows up under C:\Windows\Fonts, in the Firefox font settings and Wanikani is back to form as well. So my guess is a windows update removed the font for some strange reason.

Oh wow. The font changed at the exact time I switched to using my Windows 10 computer for most of my work, so I just assumed it was a result of that. I had no idea it was a site-wide thing for all users.

Meiryo (メイリオ, Meirio) is a Japanese sans-serif gothic typeface. Microsoft bundled Meiryo with Office Mac 2008 as part of the standard install, and it replaces MS Gothic as the default system font on Japanese systems beginning with Windows Vista.

Meiryo was created out of a growing need for legible CJK fonts compatible with Microsoft ClearType's hinting and subpixel rendering system. It was meant to increase the legibility of Japanese text on LCD screens, and would thus take the place of MS Gothic and MS Mincho, both of which had been widely used at the time. While most Latin fonts[citation needed] were able to use hinting at any size, most CJK fonts were incompatible with the technology[citation needed] (with the exception of some fonts such as Arial Unicode MS). Meiryo did away with embedding bitmap images into fonts for use at small sizes, a strategy employed by many CJK fonts (including MS Gothic and MS Mincho) to compensate for a lack of hinting support.

Meiryo UI is a version that uses condensed kana and reduced line height compared to Meiryo, introduced with Windows 7[1] and is also available as an update in Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008.[2] Similar to MS UI Gothic, the Meiryo UI fonts are bundled with the same Meiryo TTC files of respective weights.

Meiryo was designed as the enhanced version of Verdana, regarded as a highly readable font. The font's baseline was raised slightly to improve readability when mixing Latin and CJK texts. Meiryo glyphs for kanji and kana also have a height-to-width ratio of 95:100.

In previous Japanese fonts distributed with Windows, embedded bitmap glyphs are used whenever font size is set to around 9 points. Unlike previous fonts designed for CJK environments, Meiryo contains no embedded bitmaps. To improve readability under small font sizes without using embedded bitmaps, TrueType hinting language was used for stroke-reduction. A similar technology was used on MingLiU and PMingLiU versions 5.03.

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