Custom local fonts not working with webpack 5

Question

I have some local fonts I want to use in my project. I've read a few tutorials and questions on this, and I'm following the reccomendations I've seen, but my fonts are not showing up properly in the browser. I am using webpack 5. In my webpack config:

module.exports = {
  // ...
  module: {
    rules: [
      // ...
      {
        test: /\.(woff|woff2|ttf)$/,
        use: {
          loader: "url-loader",
        },
      },
    ]
  }
}

I have a bunch of .tff font files in my src/assets/fonts/ directory. I have a .scss file for global styles. In there, I define the font names and I want to use, and where webpack should find them:

@font-face {
  font-family: "InterRegular";
  src: url("../assets/fonts/Inter-Regular.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-display: swap;
}
@font-face {
  font-family: "InterMedium";
  src: url("../assets/fonts/Inter-Medium.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-display: swap;
}
@font-face {
  font-family: "InterSemiBold";
  src: url("../assets/fonts/Inter-SemiBold.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-display: swap;
}
// etc

I'm fairly sure webpack is finding these, because if I get the path to the file wrong, webpack errors. I then try to apply the font:

html,
body {
  font-family: "InterSemiBold", sans-serif;
}

There are no errors, but the font does not get applied to the page. When I look in my network tab, I can see that a font file is indeed being loaded:

But this is clearly not the InterSemiBold font. Regardless of what font I'm using, this strangely-named .tff file always shows this same, seriffed font.

Looking at the computed value of an element, I can see that the browser is reading the "InterSemiBold", sans-serif value of the font family, but still defaulting to Arial:

I have also tried loading in fonts using the file-loader with webpack, but that makes no difference, and many recommend using url-loader instead.

What am I doing wrong here? Why is my font not being loaded in and applied?

Answer 1

Your dev tools screenshot indicates your actual page/app style sheet expects the font-family name to be 'Inter'.
So you don't need different family names for each font-weight
and change your @font-face rules to something like this:

@font-face {
  font-family: 'Inter';
  font-style: normal;
  font-weight: 400;
  src: url('../assets/fonts/Inter-Regular.ttf') format('truetype')
}
@font-face {
  font-family: 'Inter';
  font-style: normal;
  font-weight: 500;
  src: url('../assets/fonts/Inter-Medium.ttf') format('truetype')
}
@font-face {
  font-family: 'Inter';
  font-style: normal;
  font-weight: 600;
  src: url('../assets/fonts/Inter-SemiBold.ttf') format('truetype')
}
@font-face {
  font-family: 'Inter';
  font-style: normal;
  font-weight: 700;
  src: url('../assets/fonts/Inter-Bold.ttf') format('truetype')
}

Your @font-face rules should include a font-style value.
For italic styles you would change it to font-style: normal.

The font-url must use the exact file name of a font style (just a note, as some automatic font loaders rename the filenames internally or load updated files directly from Google - resulting in filenames like this "inter-v11-latin-800.ttf").

Since a browser can't automatically tell which intermediate weight would be e.g 'semi-bold' or 'light', you add specific numeric font-weight values which can be used to map all font-weights to different selectors like this:

body{
    font-family:Inter;
    font-size:16px;
}

.medium{
    font-weight:500;
}

.semibold{
    font-weight:600;
}


strong, h1, h2,
.button{
    font-weight:700;
}

You might also double check your main css – it might also contain a separate @font-face declaration.

If everything is working fine, you should see the .tff files in dev tools just as defined in @font-face urls (e.g. "Inter-Regular.ttf")

Still not working?

Try to open the font via absolute URL in your browser.

Font file connection test example
Provided your compiled folder structure looks something like this:

• the final URL is "myapp.com"
• the main css is located under URL "myapp.com/css/main.css"
• font files are located (at least according to your css/compiling code) in directory URL "myapp.com/assets/fonts/"
• the actual font files should be available (downloadable) under URL "myapp.com/assets/fonts/Inter-Regular.ttf"

If this doesn't work – you need to fix the URLs in your @font-face rule.

This especially important, if assets are copied/assembled during a compiling process to a new directory – so previously paths/URLs might not be "automagically" fixed.

Another cause might be inlined css – so the css becomes part of the compiled HTML <head> or <body> – relative paths/URLs might not work anymore => absolute paths could fix this (... albeit, any decent auto inlining script should be smart enough to translate relative to absolute URLs).

Compiled css

The final css might also include some overriding rules.
So check the finally compiled css in devtools and search for any @font-face rules – as a last resort: add a !important keyword to a font src to enforce the desired URL.

Font files might be corrupt?

Since the "inter" is available as free google webfont you could get a "fresh" copy via google webfonts helper

Answer 2

I was having the same problem as you with Webpack 5 and a custom local font, none of the above suggestions worked, but I just solved it, here's how: When I went to Google Fonts the only option was to download a TTF and that's what I had been trying to use. So, I visited the google-webfonts-helper website which gives you the code to put in your CSS file to make sure I was doing it correctly, and it instead had me download a WOFF and WOFF2 of the font. When I used these files the fonts rendered properly in my Chrome browser right away. I then found a few other forums from the past where people had issues with Chrome rendering TTF's and solved them by switching to WOFF formats. I don't know exactly why this works but it did.