Richer text

TODO: screenshot showing generic families, weights, and responsive sizing in action

Bevy's text system has historically been sparse: pick a font by asset handle, set a size in pixels, done. Want bold? Load a separate bold font asset. Want italic? Another asset. Want the user's system monospace? No luck. Want text that scales with the viewport? Roll it yourself.

Not anymore.

Better font selection

FontSource now offers three ways to identify a font:

// By asset handle — same behavior as before, now wrapped in FontSource
TextFont::default().with_font(asset_server.load("fonts/FiraMono.ttf"))

// By family name — resolved from the font database
TextFont { font: FontSource::Family("FiraMono".into()), ..default() }

// By semantic category
TextFont { font: FontSource::Monospace, ..default() }

The generic variants — Serif, SansSerif, Cursive, Fantasy, Monospace, and several UI-specific ones (SystemUi, Emoji, Math, and others) — resolve to configurable defaults. Override them via FontCx:

fn configure_fonts(mut font_cx: ResMut<FontCx>) {
    font_cx.set_serif_family("Merriweather");
    font_cx.set_monospace_family("JetBrains Mono");
}

Editor tooling and non-game applications that want to respect the user's font preferences without hardcoding an asset path will find this particularly useful.

System fonts were already loadable via the backend resource in previous releases, but FontSource::Family is a cleaner, more powerful way to load them. Enable the bevy/system_font_discovery feature to make installed system fonts available by name; without it, FontSource::Family("...") will only find fonts explicitly loaded as Bevy assets.

Variable font properties

TextFont has gained the weight, width, and style fields. Pick a variable font, and say goodbye to separate assets for every variant of a typeface:

TextFont {
    font: FontSource::SansSerif,
    weight: FontWeight::BOLD,
    style: FontStyle::Italic,
    width: FontWidth::CONDENSED,
    ..default()
}

FontWeight accepts any value from 1–1000. FontStyle is Normal, Italic, or Oblique. FontWidth covers the full OpenType stretch range from ULTRA_CONDENSED (50%) to ULTRA_EXPANDED (200%).

Responsive font sizing

font_size is now a FontSize enum rather than a bare f32:

TextFont::from_font_size(FontSize::Px(24.0))   // fixed pixels — unchanged behavior
TextFont::from_font_size(FontSize::Vh(5.0))    // 5% of viewport height
TextFont::from_font_size(FontSize::Rem(1.5))   // relative to the RemSize resource

The full set of variants mirrors CSS: Px, Vw, Vh, VMin, VMax, and Rem. Rem values scale with the RemSize resource, giving you a single knob to resize all relative text at once. Note that Text2d resolves viewport units against the primary window, not the render target — a deliberate compromise for entities that can render to multiple viewports.

Letter spacing

A new LetterSpacing component controls the spacing between characters:

commands.spawn((
    Text::new("SPACED OUT"),
    LetterSpacing::Px(4.0),
));

It follows the same pattern as LineHeight, so negative values bring characters closer together. Note that LetterSpacing currently only supports Px — Rem support remains planned.

While all of these features would have been possible in cosmic_text, we've chosen to migrate to parley during this cycle. Both are solid, modern choices, but we found parley had meaningfully better documentation and was somewhat nicer to use.