Best Free Arabic Fonts for Microsoft Word, Windows & Mac

Writing Arabic texts in Microsoft Word or LibreOffice often presents challenges, particularly with the proper display of diacritical marks (Tashkeel).

This article addresses that by recommending excellent Arabic fonts for Word, Windows, and Mac, focusing on free Arabic fonts like Deja Vu Sans and Noto Sans that offer superior readability and accurate rendering of the script.

Both – Times New Roman and Arial – offer Arabic support. They are not bad at all, but sometimes they may look weird and become hard to read – especially if you use diacritical marks (Tashkeel/تَشْكِيل) and mix them with other fonts.

What options for Arabic fonts do you have?

There are Arabic fonts which are beautifully crafted. However, they are pretty expensive. I will offer you here two options which usually work and get the job done.

• Option 1 – a conservative font that is perfect for beginners and has great support of diacritical marks: Deja Vu Sans.
• Option 2 – Noto Sans: A free font with great Arabic support
• Option 2 – Google Fonts which offers more sophisticated fonts that look great, but may also be a bit fussy.

Option 1: Deja Vu

I like to use Deja Vu Sans in documents. It is a very clear font that clearly marks all diacritical marks at their appropriate position.

The DejaVu fonts are a font family based on the Vera Fonts. Its purpose is to provide a wider range of characters. The best thing – they are under a free license. In other words, you can download them and use them in your documents without worrying about copyright issues.

You can download it here: https://dejavu-fonts.github.io/

Unless you are using Linux, I would recommend downloading the ZIP-file. You will find the fonts in the TTF (TrueType)-format. If you don’t know how to install such files, I will give some hints later in this blog post.

Option 2: Noto Sans

Google offers a great font with Arabic support for free. The font family is called Noto Sans and displays all diacritical signs very nicely.

Where can you get it? Just follow this link:

Option 3: Google Fonts

There is a great option which is called GOOGLE FONTS: fonts.google.com

Google offers professional fonts for free. You don’t need to buy them. Many people forget that you can’t just download a font and use it. You need to obtain a license. If you use Google fonts, you are fine.

Buy Arabic fonts

Many websites offer professional Arabic fonts made by designers. They do cost some money, however, if you are looking for a beautiful and remarkable font for Photoshop, you may check out such websites.

A nice example is a font called Felfel which you can buy for $20 here.

How do you download Arabic fonts?

Choose the language: Arabic

On the right part of your screen, you will see the option “Languages”. Choose Arabic.

Choose a font

You will now see all fonts that offer full Arabic support.

Download the font

Click on the “plus”-symbol to mark the fonts you want to download. After that, you will see a new window at the bottom. Enlarge it.

In order to download it, click on the symbol on the right.

Unzip the file

You will end up with a zip-file called “fonts.zip”.

Unzip it.

Install the fonts

You will see some TrueType-files now with the extension .TTF.  Usually, it works if you simply open them with a double-click. If your operating system doesn’t know what to do, try to press the right mouse button and see if you could open or install the file with a font manager.

If all this doesn’t work out, go to google and search for: “install ttf files”.

How do you write the “Basmallah” or Allah (the “Grand Word”) in a nice way?

For example: In the name of God/Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful: بِسْمِ اللهِ الرَّحْمٰنِ الرَّحِيْمِ – check out this blog post:

• Tools and Apps

How to Write Allah in Arabic Correctly

Many fonts fail to display Allah (اللّٰه) in Arabic correctly, often missing the crucial dagger Aleph. This article guides you on writing "Allah" and common Islamic salutations like "Peace be upon him" (ﷺ) beautifully and accurately. It covers how fonts handle these forms automatically and…

REMARK: Twitter-User Zübeyt Nalçakan (@ZubeytNalcakan) suggested the following website: http://arbfonts.com