Bundled fonts show as system fonts on iOS but not Android

[murattil]

The fonts packaged as assets in my RN app (assets/fonts/[font].ttf) show up as system fonts on iOS when listed with listFontFamilies(), and I am able to use them in the Paragraph API directly without passing a custom font manager. On Android however, they don't show up, and a call to listFontFamilies() just lists a couple of basic Android fonts.

What is the reason for that discrepancy? Is there any way to make the bundled fonts show as system fonts as well, similar to the behaviour on iOS? I know you can create a custom font manager (useFonts), however, as I have >500 fonts that need to be loaded, doing require('...') on all of them takes a very long time, and sometimes crashes the app on lower-end Android devices. On iOS this is not an issue, as they are usable without loading them into a custom font manager.

[mmmoussa]

To add to this issue, using require('...') is causing each of these fonts to be copied into the bundle's assets a second time when building the app for release. With large fonts, this causes significant bloat to the app's bundled size.