Sometimes you see garbage characters like Square Boxes, Question Mark Sign, etc. On-screen instead of Malayalam characters.
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It is often common to come across Malayalam content on websites like Malayalam news sites or any other website that provides content in the same language.
Most likely, your missing Unicode font is the problem.
What’s a Unicode Font?
As the name suggests, Unicode fonts are fonts that work across different languages. The idea behind these fonts is to create one font that can be used to display all languages with minimal levels of distortion. This is done by using different shapes for each letter.
Today, there are just over 100,000 Unicode fonts that cover 99% of the world’s population and 95% of the world’s languages.
We would recommend you to download nice looking open-source Unicode fonts from Swathanthra Malayalam Computing. Here are some examples – AnjaliOldLipi, Gayathri, Manjari, Meera, Rachana, Raghu Malayalam Sans, Suruma etc.
Installing a Font on Mac OS
To install fonts in macOS, you will need to purchase them from a font provider. You can also download open-source fonts. Once you have your fonts, follow these steps:
- Open Font Book (located in the Applications folder)
- Double-click on the desired font package.
- Locate and click Install Font.
Installing a Font on Windows
The following step-by-step guide will show you how to install fonts in Windows.
- Double click on the downloaded file to extract the .ttf or .otf file that is inside it.
- Go to Control Panel> Fonts> Add Fonts> Choose the extracted file.
- Click OK to install it.
Change Standard Font in Browsers
Below you will find a quick and easy to follow guide for changing fonts in your favourite browsers like Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Apple Safari etc.
- Select the Settings option from the top-right menu of the browser.
- The Settings page will now appear. Type “Fonts” into the search box.
- From the search results, select Customise fonts.
- On the Customise fonts screen, you can choose which fonts your browser will use for the Standard, Serif, Sans Serif and Fixed-width font styles.
- Change the Standard font to the desired Malayalam Unicode font from the list.
Just restart your browser and start reading Malayalam content!