Grade A

Swap Google Fonts Display: Improve Font Rendering & Performance

Name: Swap Google Fonts Display: Improve Font Rendering & Performance
Rating: 4.3 (13 reviews)
Author: Gijo Varghese

⤓ Download v1.1.1 on WordPress.org ↗

by Gijo Vargheseupdated 2026-05-20✨The Quiet Achiever

A small fix for fonts that refuse to show up on time.

Healthy

80/100

Users appreciate the simplicity but some find it fails to catch every font issue.

Loved28/40

Trustworthy13/15

Fair & Honest14/15

Maintained18/18

Momentum7/12

✂️

You might not need this plugin. Its core job is small enough to live in your theme's functions.php.

Show the snippet

add_filter( 'style_loader_src', function( $src ) {
    if ( strpos( $src, 'fonts.googleapis.com' ) !== false ) {
        if ( strpos( $src, 'display=' ) === false ) {
            $src = add_query_arg( 'display', 'swap', $src );
        } else {
            $src = preg_replace( '/display=[^&]+/', 'display=swap', $src );
        }
    }
    return $src;
}, 10, 1 );

Keep in mind:This only covers fonts enqueued via wp_enqueue_style; fonts hard-coded in themes or loaded via @import in CSS are not affected.

More plugins you can skip →

Active installs

~15,000

our estimate · wp.org shows 10k+

Rating

4.4★

13 ratings

Trend · vs a year ago

Holding steady

15 → 15 installs/day

Downloads over time

real new installs per day · release spikes shown separately from the trend

2025-04-302025-08-082025-11-162026-02-232026-06-03

organicrelease spikerelease tailorganic trend · 14d rolling median

Holding steady · 0% in the last year

15/day a year ago→15/day today

Reviews

what people actually say

Swap Google Fonts Display is praised for its ease of use and ability to fix font rendering issues, though a few users report it fails to apply swaps to certain fonts.

What people like

+Very easy to set up and use, just activate the plugin and it works×2
+Fixes Elementor-related font problems
+Improves Lighthouse/PageSpeed scores by a few points
+Prevents invisible text during web-font load (FOIT)
+Removes pre-loaded font errors without breaking layout

Common complaints

−Does not add font-display swap to URLs or other fonts in some cases
−Some users report the plugin does nothing for them
−Cannot modify fonts injected by external scripts (e.g., reCaptcha), so PageSpeed may still flag font-swap issues

Review trustReviews look organic

4.33★Verified rating — holds steady vs the raw 4.40★
8%One-shot reviewers — most reviewers are active community members

Reviews per month · 5★ vs lower

Not enough review history.

All-time ratings · 13 total

5★

4★

3★

2★

1★

Latest reviews · 13 analyzed

2022-01-28★★★★★The ONLY Plugin that works adventurearckids
2021-06-03★★★★★Just activate the plugin and it works dusemedia
2021-01-05★★★★★Not worked for me Deep Sojitra
2021-01-04★★★★★Easy to implement with instant results Mike1-shot
2020-11-20★★★★★Works fine outfoxer
2020-11-15★★★★★Sadly…VladaPFC
2020-06-17★★★★★Did the job!vhwk3
2020-02-26★★★★★Super efficient yannickburky
2020-02-09★★★★★this is fire 🔥🔥🔥James Revillini
2019-12-18★★★★★Solved all problem at once!kghugo2000

Releases

recent versions from WordPress.org SVN

2026-05-20v1.1.1
2024-08-24v1.1.0
2021-10-18v1.0.6
2019-12-17v1.0.5
2019-12-11v1.0.4
2019-11-12v1.0.3
2019-10-24v1.0.2
2019-09-22v1.0

For developers & the curious

the raw signals behind the grade — none of this is on the friendly summary above

Download signals

Baselines are computed on organic days only — release spikes and their tails are excluded, so they're not inflated by the auto-update wave.

Baseline · median of last 7 organic days

Prior 7-day baseline

Floor · 25th percentile over 14 days

Mean release-day peak (30d)

Latest day · 2026-06-03(organic)

-29.4%

Week-over-week organic trend

Review signals

Concentration and drive-by metrics drive the review-burst and fake-review flags. 30–40% solo reviewers is normal; we only flag the extremes.

—

Max month share · biggest single 30-day window

—

Distribution CV · <0.6 even, >1.5 bursty

85%

5★ share in analyzed sample

Solo reviewers · only this one wp.org activity

—

Volume velocity · last 6mo vs prior 6mo

4.38 → 4.33★

Sample avg · raw → solo-filtered