Earlier this week, cxziaho shared a method on how to change the Vita’s fonts with us all. While customisation is great, the method was pretty unsafe since it made you have to replace a file in sa0 which could even hinder your ability to restore the firmware if you install a wrong font. Now, thanks to his efforts fontRedirect is out so you could change your Vita’s font in a safe way!

Changing the fonts on the Vita – the safe way!

What’s fontRedirect?

fontRedirect is a plugin that lets you change your Vita/PSTV’s font without the added risk of the method previously shared on this website. The plugin works by injecting a different path into SceLibPvf which means that when you start your Vita without plugins (holding the L trigger on boot up if you’re using HENkaku Ensō), the original font will be used as no system files get modified. This means that you will not be bricking your PSVita if you install an incorrect font so you can experiment all you want!

While the plugin works with system applications and homebrew, I’ve found out that most PSVita games just crash after a small while. There’s also an issue with VitaShell in which it’ll lock up your device (only locking the device by pressing the power button works) when you try to create a new folder.

The plugin actually works well in non-game PSVita applications

How do I install this plugin?

Installing the plugin and changing your font is pretty easy:

• Download the plugin from the link below. You should also get a font file in the form of a TTF or OTF file.
• Copy fontRedirect.suprx to ur0:tai or ux0:tai depending on which directory you use for your taiHEN config.txt file.
• Copy the font over to ux0:/data/font AND rename it to “font.otf” (without the quotes). The file extension must still be OTF EVEN IF the font file is a TTF file.
• Insert fontRedirect.suprx as the first entry under *main in your taiHEN config.txt.
• Reboot your PSVita/PSTV and enjoy!
• If you have any issues, just hold the left trigger while booting and all plugins will be bypassed.

Conclusion

While this plugin is pretty cool, it is pretty rough around the edges and the fact that games don’t work with it is kind of a deal breaker. I tried 5 different PSVita games, none of which worked which means the plugin is little more than a novelty unless you plan to only use homebrew/system and PSN applications/PSP games. Hopefully, this will be fixed soon enough by ‘cxziaho’ who nontheless, still did a good job with this plugin with some help from Rinnegatamante, Xerpi and devnoname120.

Unfortunately, you’ll be seeing a lot of this in your Vita games

fontRedirect download link: https://github.com/cxziaho/fontRedirect/releases/tag/1.0

More information about the plugin: https://github.com/cxziaho/fontRedirect/blob/master/README.md

I’m aware there’s a GUI application for fontRedirect called fontInstaller but it crashed on me no matter what I tried so I’ll delay an aritcle on that until I can actually get it to work!

Note: The font used in the images is called Sofia and was downloaded from fontsquirrel.com.