How to access ligatures in your font

Technical helpUpdated September 29, 2026

Ligatures are special characters built into the font file itself -- they are not separate downloads. If your font includes them, they are already in the .otf or .ttf file you downloaded. You just need to know how to switch them on in your software.

What is a ligature?

A ligature is where two or more letters are joined into a single character for a cleaner, more polished result. Common examples are "fi" and "fl" -- where the dot of the "i" or the top of the "l" would otherwise clash with the "f". Decorative fonts often include more elaborate ligatures: letter pairs that flow into each other as part of the design.

Standard ligatures improve readability. Discretionary ligatures are stylistic -- you opt into them when you want that extra typographic detail.

Adobe Photoshop

Select your text layer.
Go to Type > Panels > Glyphs Panel to open the Glyphs panel.
Click and hold any character in the panel to see its ligature variants.
Double-click a ligature to insert it at your cursor position.

To enable standard ligatures automatically across a text block:

Select the text.
Open the Character panel (Window > Type > Character).
Click the panel menu (top-right corner) and select OpenType.
Check Standard Ligatures (and Discretionary Ligatures if you want the decorative ones too).

Adobe Illustrator

Select your text.
Go to Type > Glyphs to open the Glyphs panel.
Browse or filter for ligatures, then double-click to insert.

To enable them automatically:

Select the text.
Open the OpenType panel (Window > Type > OpenType).
Toggle on Standard Ligatures or Discretionary Ligatures.

Adobe InDesign

InDesign has the most complete OpenType support of the Adobe apps.

Select your text.
Open the OpenType panel (Window > Type & Tables > OpenType).
Enable Standard Ligatures or Discretionary Ligatures.

You can also apply ligatures through a paragraph or character style, which means they will apply automatically to any text using that style.

Figma

Select your text layer.
Open the Type settings panel (the A icon in the right sidebar).
Scroll down to find OpenType feature toggles.
Enable Ligatures or the relevant stylistic set for your font.

Figma supports most standard and discretionary ligatures in .otf fonts. It also has a Glyphs panel for browsing all characters in a font -- select your text layer, then go to Type > Open Glyphs Panel.

Canva

Canva has built-in ligature support. Here is how to turn it on:

Select your text box.
Click the Advanced formatting icon (the A with settings switches, in the text toolbar).
Go to the Typography tab.
Toggle Ligatures on.

Canva's ligature toggle covers standard ligatures. For advanced OpenType features like discretionary ligatures or swashes, Canva does not expose those directly. If the font uses PUA encoding, you can copy specific glyph characters from Character Map (Windows) or Font Book (Mac) and paste them into your Canva text box.

Affinity Designer / Publisher

Select your text.
Open the Character panel (View > Studio > Character).
Expand the Typography section and enable ligatures.

Ligatures are not showing up

A few things to check:

Does the font include ligatures? Not all fonts do. Check the product page -- ligatures are usually listed in the features or description.
Are you using the right file format? Ligatures are an OpenType feature. .otf files give you full feature access. Older .ttf files may have limited support depending on the font.
Re-download the font. Try downloading a fresh copy from your downloads page. Corrupted files can strip out OpenType features.
Canva-specific: If you uploaded a custom font to Canva, use the .otf version where available. The ligature toggle may not respond to all .ttf files.

If you have tried all of the above and ligatures still are not appearing, contact support with the font name and the software you are using.

Was this helpful?