Is it possible to make gradients on editable fonts easier? Right now it's complex via the appearance panel, and it's impossible to adjust the angle of the gradient on the stroke of an editable font with the gradient tool. This creates unintuitive and hassle of a workflow. Perfectly allright to have the chosen gradient also appear in the appearance panel, for further stacking / other effects; but ideally I would want to be able to colour pick a gradient (fill and stroke) of a sample and have it shown immediately on the editable font instead of a whole hassle through extra panels. And be able to use the gradient tool to adjust both fill/stroke gradients on the editable font, to get them in exactly the same direction without having to scroll through degrees on the appearance panel.

Seriously it's about time the counterintuitive method is fixed to work without having a quirky way to apply it. I'm referring to applying a gradient to editable text. You should be able to apply a gradient directly onto the text without having to first remove it's fill then add a fill back in the 'Appearance' panel, then apply the gradient. Even when the swatch indicates a gradient is applied it is not. It isn't fun when things are designed counterintuitively, especially when learning how to master the environment of Illustrator.

As far as I recall, applying a gradient to live text never worked in Illustrator. We have to create a separate fill first to that, in the Appearance panel — then it works (although the individual fills for character stay below and can be visible at the edges).
I tested it again to see if it works in multiple versions before 25 and could not find one.
I am merging this report into a general request to have a better way to do that (because it is possible in other apps without this special ritual! — Affinity Designer can do that, Corel Draw can, Inkscape...)

In earlier versions of Illustrator, when the modern gradient annotator was introduced (CS4), we had only one shown when applying a gradient to a group of objects (or just a selection of objects).
The users wanted to see annotators for all of the objects in the selection: even if some are not filled with gradients, even if the gradient differ, even if they don’t match in lengths and angle.
This was a nice change (although sometimes it prevents from editing a similar gradients for an ungrouped selection of objects).

I imagine something similar can be permitted for character in a text objects, which can be treated as special type of groups (if we look at the Appearance panel).
But seeing a bunch of annotators — one per each character! — would be a very difficult thing to manage! And separate annotators per character is probably the way it is going to be implemented, because this is how Ai treats gradient for groups :(

So the current way of applying the gradient with a unified separate fill is a better way, actually — to my taste... I still upvote it, but this should be made VERY carefully.

Not with the appearance technique, just with the eyedropper

Can you add the possibility to add a gradient to a text without outlining it?

Gradient fills are not working on text in Illustrator. It just turns the text black. Also, after I converted the text to outlines, drop shadows won't show.

still & also have the very same issue in Illustrator 23 / 2019 in Mac OS / Mojave 10.14.6

Trying to mock up a gradient on text to represent a reflective light on it when printed. Before the update I know this worked, but in v25.0 gradients on live text appear black. Example attached with text in a random solid colour, and text in a random gradient appearing black.

From all the posts I've read, you should be able to have individual gradients per letter once you add a non-destructive outline in the Appearance Panel. I've even seen the steps described many times. However, trying to add an individual gradient per letter/number does not work no matter what method I use to add the gradient fill. The letters only show black or show the gradient across all letters - no matter what gradient I choose. There's seems to be a bug, because I've tried several different ways of adding the colors, even selecting each letter individually, and it will not change. Single colors change fine. Destructively outlining it and adding a gradient works fine as well.

iMac
Illustrator 23.0.1
macOS High Sierra 10.13.6

Why I can't use gradient onto text? Either I have to curve it or I have to take and extra layer from appearance panel..!! I wish I could directly pic the gradient.

No so much of as an idea as a rendering bug, the idea would be to fix it.
Gradient stroke & fill can no longer be seen when applied to editable type.
Versions CC2018 will not render the Gradient stroke & fill, just renders as black.

If we could apply gradients to live text the same way you would a shape, that would be great. I'm not sure why after all these years, this still is a missing feature.

With type object selected, you can add a new Fill from Appearance panel and apply the gradient on that fill.

-******

why cant i add gradient to a font ?