To change the appearance of Musescore user interface, see Preferences instead.
To edit sound samples, see SoundFonts and SFZ files instead.
A computer font (font family, font face, typeface) is a digital data file containing a set of characters or symbols. This chapter discusses score object's font assignment method and option and others. Usage of font data depends on,
Font file cannot be embedded into a score file.
Musescore Text object contains individual characters that can be entered and removed by using (typing on) a computer keyboard. Some subtypes have specialized automatic formatting feature eg chord symbol rendering style and Roman Numeral Analysis auto formatting.
Characters in a Text object are either plain or special characters.
Plain characters, entered using a computer keyboard.
Musical text and symbols (special characters, professional glyphs) that are not on computer keyboard should be added from Symbols and special characters → Common Symbols and Musical Symbols tabs in Text editing mode, or using Keyboard shortcuts. eg Segno, Coda, ottavas, dynamics etc among other pre-configured Palette items. They are not unicode characters. Special internal encodings such as <sym> are used to provide
Advanced users can add plain characters that look like special characters but do not have these program features. They are under unicode Private Use Area (PUA) and can be added from Symbols and special characters →Unicode tab in Text editing mode, and under Master palette → Symbol category.
Score objects are not Musescore Text if they cannot be edited using (typing on) a computer keyboard.
Font assignment in Inspector (musescore 3), Properties panel (musescore 4), Format → Style → [item] and Format → Style → Text Styles → [item]. See the Layout and formatting and Text styles and properties chapters.
Font options can use
Fonts designed specifically for musical notation are required to display them.
Font assignments of Text's special characters portions and Non-Text are a global setting. Special characters ignore inspector fontface assignment.
Font options can use
Using updated font version is covered in https://johngrren007.blogspot.com/2018/04/musejazz-customised-font.html, and https://musescore.org/en/node/299448#comment-1171159. Score files (*.mscz) using them may render poorly on other machines, because the modified font files are not embedded into the score file. To install a new font file onto an OS, refer to the instructions written for that OS.
Valid for Musescore 3.6.2 only. How can I add third party SMuFL Fonts? covers how to use a 3.7 fork to use fonts installed on the OS directly.
Musescore create in-app user interface, and musical symbols and notation on score, with data content from font files. Some fonts are invented by Musescore project development team for Musescore and maintained by the team. Some fonts are from other companies, the team does not edit their content at all. Read the readme file https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/blob/master/fonts/README.md . Musescore software development focuses on engraving creation, based on real world notation popularity and significance, it does not aim to create support for every symbols included in any one particular font.
Musescore program is shipped with a limited set of font due to licensing reason.
Emmentaler has been renamed as "mscore" after musescore 3.6.2
Standard Music Font Layout (SMuFL) is a standard way of mapping the thousands of musical symbols required by conventional music notation, to the code-points of Private Use Area (PUA, wikipedia) in Unicode's Basic Multilingual Plane. It improves font format independence. The SMuFL standard itself is not managed by the Musescore project development team.
"Musical text" is a component of Musescore's implementation, the internal encoding schema does not conform to any standard, research the musescore 3.6.2 archived source code