The short version
- Downloading a profile is not installing it. After opening the .mobileconfig, go to Settings, General, VPN and Device Management, and tap Install.
- If the profile is not listed there, the download did not register: open the file from the Files app, not from a preview, and try again.
- An installed font only appears in apps with a font picker. Messages, Notes, and Mail have none; that is not a bug.
- One profile can carry several fonts. Installing a new one does not remove the old ones unless it has the same identifier.
1. "I downloaded it and nothing happened"
This is the one everyone hits. Opening a .mobileconfig file shows a banner saying the profile was downloaded, and that is all it does. Installing is a separate step that iOS makes you do on purpose: Settings, General, VPN and Device Management (on older iOS, Profiles), tap the profile, tap Install, enter your passcode, tap Install again. Then check Settings, General, Fonts.
2. The profile is not in Settings
If VPN and Device Management does not list it, iOS never registered the download. Usual causes:
- You opened the file inside another app's preview (Mail, a browser, a chat app). Save it to Files first, then tap it there.
- Safari asked "Allow this website to download a configuration profile?" and the answer was Ignore. Download again and tap Allow.
- The file was renamed or zipped in transit. It must end in .mobileconfig and open directly.
3. "Not signed" or "Not verified"
iOS shows an unsigned warning on any profile that was not signed by an Apple-registered organisation, which includes profiles from most font apps. The warning is about who made the file, not what is in it. Tap the profile to see its contents; a font profile contains a font and nothing else. If that is all it lists, install it.
4. Installed, but the font is not in my app
Check Settings, General, Fonts. If the font is listed there, the install worked, and the question is whether the app you are looking in has a font picker at all. Pages, Keynote, Word, GoodNotes, Notability, and Cricut Design Space do. Messages, Notes, Mail, Instagram, and most chat apps do not, on any iPhone, with any font. Google Docs uses its own online list and ignores installed fonts. The list of which apps see it is in how to install a custom font on iPhone.
If the app should see it and does not, force quit the app and reopen it. Some apps read the font list at launch.
5. I installed a new version and the old one is gone
Each profile has an identifier. Installing a profile with the same identifier replaces the earlier one, which is how updates work. If you want both versions of a font at once, they need to be separate profiles with different identifiers; a tool that makes profiles for you handles this, but two profiles hand-made from the same template may collide.
6. How to remove a font
Settings, General, VPN and Device Management, tap the profile, Remove Profile, passcode. The font disappears from every app immediately. Nothing else on the phone is affected, because nothing else was in the profile.
7. I have a TTF and no profile
iOS will not install a bare TTF. It needs to be wrapped in a profile, which is what font manager apps do, and what SnapFont does automatically for the fonts it makes. For a TTF from somewhere else, any font manager app on the App Store will wrap it; the install steps after that are exactly the ones above.