fc-list command in Linux with examples

fc-list command is a part of the fontconfig system. It is used to list the available fonts and font styles. Using the format option, the list of all fonts can be filtered and sorted out. Moreover, multiple parameters can be passed to it after a colon symbol (:) to restrict the information that is being displayed on the screen.

Syntax:

fc-list [-vqVh] [-f FORMAT] [–verbose] [–format=FORMAT] [–quiet] [–version] [–help] [pattern] {element …} List fonts matching [pattern]

Example: It will print all the file locations of the font files present in the system, with their font name, spacing and style type.

fc-list

Options:

• -v, –verbose: It is used to show the entire font pattern verbosely.
• -f, –format=FORMAT: To use the given output format.
• -q, –quiet: It will suppress all normal output, exit 1 if no fonts matched.
• -V, –version: It will show font config version and exit.
• -h, –help: Used to show the help message and exit.

Some More Examples:

• fc-list with font-family: It will print only the names of the font families, without displaying the other aforementioned details.

  fc-list : family 

  

• fc-list with font family + Language selector: It will print only the names of the font families which support the selected language code, without displaying the other aforementioned details.

  Note: The language code used here is “ta”, which stands for the language Tamil.

  fc-list : family lang=ta 

  

  Note: The language code used here is “hi”, which stands for the language Hindi.

  fc-list : family lang=hi

  

• fc-list with other selectors: Similar to the family selector, we can also select the file location, spacing or/and style of the required fonts to be displayed onscreen.

  fc-list : family style 

  

  Note: Sorting and unique can also be incorporated along with this command

  fc-list : family spacing | sort | uniq

  

• fc-list with format option: This option is used to format the output text to the required pattern given by the user. In this example, the format option is used to get the family names of all the fonts, sorted and unique.

  fc-list --format="%{family[0]}\n" | sort | uniq