Text Customization

Text Customization controls how text looks throughout the Quran and Hadith sections — the font, size, line height, spacing and colours — separately for each part of the app, each language, and each way of writing the Qur'an's Arabic.

Scripts differ in what they need. Arabic with its vowel marks wants room between lines; Urdu in Nastaliq cascades down the line and wants more; English reads comfortably smaller and closer set. A font that suits one language may not be able to write another at all. So rather than one setting for the whole app, every part of the app and every language keeps its own, and each is applied automatically wherever that text appears.

Opening Text Customization

On any reading screen — a verse, a surah, a hadith collection's chapters, a chapter's narrations, a narration, or the Random Hadith card — open the ⋮ menu and choose Customize text.

The Text Style screen opens on the part of the app you came from and the language you were reading, so the first thing you adjust is what you were looking at. From there you can choose any other section or language.

A live preview at the top shows the text as it will appear, and every change is shown there as you make it.

Sections

Settings are kept separately for each part of the app:

Each section follows its own settings, so the Arabic of a verse can be large on the verse screen and more compact in the surah listing, and a chapter's list of narrations can be styled differently from the narration you open.

Languages and Scripts

Each language separately

Within a section, each language has its own settings. For example, on the verse screen you might set:

• Arabic — a larger size, with generous line height for the vowel marks
• English — a smaller size, with ordinary line height
• Urdu — a Nastaliq font, with extra line height
• Hindi — a Devanagari font

Each is applied automatically wherever that language appears. The language list shows only the languages the section can actually display — Ayah Transliteration, for instance, lists the languages transliterations are available in, rather than every language a translation exists in.

Each Arabic script separately

The Qur'an can be read in several scripts — the same words, spelled and drawn according to different traditions. They sit differently on the line: some cascade and need height, others sit flat and read well set closer. Several are drawn with letterforms that only particular fonts contain, so each script comes with a font that can draw it.

For the sections that show the Qur'an's Arabic, the settings are therefore kept for each script:

• Set the font, size, line height and colour for Uthmani, switch to IndoPak, and you find the settings you made for IndoPak.
• Switch back, and your Uthmani settings are exactly as you left them.
• A script you have not opened before starts with settings chosen for it, in a font that can draw it.

The script row

In a section that draws the Qur'an's Arabic, a row of your installed scripts appears beneath the section tabs. It starts on the script you are reading, so what you adjust is what you were just looking at. Tap another script to adjust that one instead.

The row appears only where it applies. A transliteration line is in Latin letters whatever script the Arabic above it is in, so Ayah Transliteration is styled per language, without a script row.

Controls

Size, line height and spacing

Each can be set three ways: drag the slider, tap − or +, or type the value.

Colours

The colour picker offers a colour wheel, a brightness slider, a transparency slider and a hex code field, with a sample of the chosen colour. A prefix colour a little lighter or more muted than the text colour lets the chain and references recede, so the words of the narration or verse lead.

Font

The typeface — see Fonts.

Fonts

Tap Font to choose a typeface. The app includes fonts for Arabic — among them Amiri Quran, designed for Qur'anic text — for Urdu in Nastaliq and Naskh, and for Bengali, Devanagari and Latin scripts. Each font is shown with a sample in the language you are styling, so you can compare them before choosing.

A font you choose applies at once, and to the section and language you chose it for, and nowhere else: a font for Hadith Preview · English leaves Hadith Preview · Urdu, and every other section, as they were.

Sizes that match across fonts

The same size can look quite different in two Arabic typefaces, because each uses the space it is given differently — some draw their letters generously, others small within the same space. The app matches them, so a size means the same visible size whichever Arabic font draws it.

• The number you set stays the number shown. The matching happens as the text is drawn, so the slider always shows the size you chose.
• Text is only ever enlarged to match, never reduced. A font that already draws generously is left as it is.
• It applies to every Arabic font the app includes, whether it is a section's default or one you choose yourself, in the Quran and the Hadith sections alike.
• Fonts that are already close are left alone, so two fonts can still look like two different fonts.

Importing a font

You can add fonts from your device, in whatever form they came.

The app recognises a font by what the file contains rather than by its name, so a file with the wrong extension still imports correctly.

How to import

1. In the font list, tap +.
2. Choose a font file, or a ZIP of fonts.
3. If the file holds more than one font, choose one. Each is shown in its own typeface, with what it is and where it sits in the file.
4. Check the name, the language and the preview, and tap Add.

Before you add it

• Name — taken from the name the font gives itself rather than the file name, and editable with the pencil.
• Language — suggested for you. The language you were choosing a font for is kept when the font can write it; when it cannot — an Arabic font without Urdu's additional letters, for instance — the font is filed under the script it does cover.
• Preview — a line of the chosen language, drawn in the font itself. Change the language and the preview follows, so a missing letter shows here rather than on the page.
• What was found — for example, TrueType · from a WOFF2 web font, or face 2 of 3 in a collection.

Each font is checked before it is offered. A font your phone cannot display is not added; in a collection or archive it is shown dimmed, with the reason. Type 1 fonts (.pfb, .pfa) and Embedded OpenType (.eot) are not used on Android — import the OpenType, TrueType or WOFF version of the same font instead, which is almost always available.

After import

An imported font appears in the font list straight away, is kept on your device, and can be used in every section and language. Edit changes its name and language, and Delete removes it.

All Styles

All Styles shows every section together in the language you choose, each drawn with its own settings. Use it to:

• check that the sections work well together,
• compare how different kinds of text look in the same font,
• see which section needs adjusting after you have changed several.

Change the language to see every section in another language, and scroll through the sections. It reflects your latest changes.

Resetting

Reset to Defaults, at the bottom of the Text Style screen, returns the section you are styling to its default settings, after asking you to confirm. Every other section is left as it is.

Tips

• Style each language on its own — a size that suits Arabic is rarely right for English.
• Style each script on its own — Nastaliq usually needs more line height than Naskh.
• Read for a while before settling — a size and line height that look right in the preview should also be comfortable over a long passage.
• Use the prefix colour to let chains and references recede behind the text.
• Check All Styles after changing several sections.
• Import the fonts you will use — from a family ZIP, the weights you read in rather than all of them.

Related

• Quran — Arabic scripts and transliteration
• Hadith Library — the reading screen and Random Hadith