Starting today, we’ve added support for Typekit fonts on the new Chrome for Android. This new browser adds support for the WOFF file format — the industry standard and our preferred format wherever it’s supported. To get this latest update, just republish your kits.

Additionally, we’ve updated our support for the default Android browser. Typekit has supported fonts on this browser since Android 2.2 added support for OpenType fonts in the fall of 2010. But beginning with Android 3.1, that font support changed: with that version, Android dropped support for the name table obfuscation that Typekit uses to make sure our commercial fonts are not installable when served on the web.

As much as we work hard to make sure Typekit’s fonts work everywhere, we also have an obligation to our foundry partners to ensure reasonable protections for their fonts. As such, in order to continue serving fonts to the default Android browser on Android 3.1+, we are revising our support to use SVG fonts instead of OpenType fonts. SVG fonts are not installable in the first place, so they do not need the same level of protection as OpenType fonts. Unfortunately, SVG fonts also have some drawbacks: they can have larger file sizes, and they do not support advanced OpenType features. But even with these drawbacks, we believe SVG fonts are the best option for supporting the default browser on Android 3.1+; Android devices running 2.2–3.0 will continue to receive OpenType fonts.

In time, we hope that the new Chrome Browser for Android will replace the default, making for a better browsing experience and increasing the number of commonly used browsers that support the WOFF standard.

As before, you can enable or disable sending fonts to Android or other mobile devices in your Kit Editor (under Kit Settings > Mobile Settings). If you are supporting Android, you need only republish your kits to get the latest updates.