Typeface app release notes

Black on white is the most common way to display typography. With a lot of contrast it also makes sense for previewing the overall shape and character of your fonts.

But you may already have a specific color palette in mind for a project. Or perhaps you want to see what a font looks like in low contrast situations.

Therefore I’m excited to announce a colorful new update: you can now customize colors for preview text and backgrounds directly in Typeface app.

No need to switch back and forth to your design app anymore to preview a font on a vivid business card, flyer or website. Switch to the colors of your choice by choosing View > Show Colors from the main menu, or click on the color wheel button in the Pr preview text panel.

What’s super cool? The interface subtly adjusts to the colors you pick, to fully immerse yourself in the theme. And if you need additional contrast for accessibility choose one of the new high contrast themes in Settings.

In addition to colorizing regular fonts, you can also preview color palettes of color fonts (COLRv0). These special fonts contain several layers which can be colored separately to create nice effects. Use the Variables detail tab to adjust these palettes.

Enjoy!

Growing tired of always seeing the same fonts first when browsing your library? Enable the new random sorting to get a fresh and unbiased view of your fonts. You might discover some new favourites that were previously hidden in the deep depths of your collection.

Tags in Typeface allow you to neatly organize your fonts. When your library grows you can make subtags to structure your collections, simply by adding a ‘/’ to tag names: #my/nested/tag. Now you can conveniently nest subtags by dragging them to another tag in the sidebar, so you don’t have to manually rename and add parent tag prefixes anymore. You can also drag tags to the search field for quick filtering.

The Text detail tab includes two new text layouts: Characters and Waterfall. Get a quick overview of which accented characters are supported, or view multiple font weights at once. Quick brown fox is here to help :)

Enjoy!

Browse subfolders

With Typeface app you have full control over where you store your fonts. When you import a folder Typeface links to its location, font files are not copied or moved.

This also allows you to organize your font files and folder structure however you want. You’re not constrained to an app managed hierarchy. For example you can group fonts in subfolders by foundry, source, client or even alphabetically.

Now in Typeface v3.13 you can view your custom subfolder structure from Finder directly in the sidebar. Expand your imported locations to browse through subfolders and find the fonts you need. Filter fonts by adding a nested folder to the search filters, or directly activate and deactivate fonts in a specific directory. And you can quickly collapse all folders to get them out of the way.

If you’ve already imported multiple separate subfolders into the app you can simply import their parent folder from Finder. Expand the parent folder in the sidebar to explore subfolders. Then you can remove the separate imported locations from the sidebar and your fonts will stay imported through the imported parent folder.

Font Export

Need to collect some fonts for output and copy them to a folder? You can now export font files directly from Typeface app and store them in a specific location in Finder. This allows you to archive fonts next to your project files, or you can easily package fonts to share with colleagues, clients, or collaborators.

Export fonts by choosing File > Export from the main menu, or drag and drop them wherever you want. You can drag to Finder, your Desktop or even to shelf apps such as Dropzone, Yoink and Dropover. Learn more

Change Main Previews

When grouping fonts by family Typeface automatically displays the font that is closest to regular. This is done based on font meta data. In most cases you’ll see the regular font instead of a bold or italic variant, but for some families the meta data may be incorrect or the perfect pick may be ambiguous.

Now you can adjust this by manually picking the main preview of a family, such that you’ll always see the font you want to see. This is particularly helpful for font families that have symbolic or swash variants which may’ve been picked instead of a regular variant.

To change a main preview:

1. Right click (or Control click) on a font
2. Choose the Family submenu
3. Click on Change Main Preview (or hold down the Option key)

Alternatively choose File > Edit Families from the main menu and click on a main preview icon to adjust the main preview of a family.

Selection Mode

Collecting fonts is great when you’re browsing your library and want to mark candidates for your design. But when managing and categorizing your fonts it’s often easier to just select things.

That’s why Typeface now offers the best of both worlds with a new Selection Mode. When enabled you can select fonts, just like you would in any other app. Double click a font to view details. You can use the arrow keys to scroll through your library and use handy new shortcuts to go in and out of detail view.

The Collect corner is still there and allows you to collect fonts like you’re used to. It puts fonts in the temporary Quick Collection, so you can easily review your marked candidates.

Both selection and Quick Collection work hand in hand to make Typeface more intuitive to browse.

Selection Mode is the default for new installs, but the app keeps the current setting for existing users. You can enable the new Selection Mode in the grid toolbar button or in the app Settings.

Styles Detail Tabs

Font details are now even more useful with new tabs and handy font info. The separate family view has been integrated into the detail view with a new Preview Styles tab. Now you can more easily access family styles when you click on a font. The style previews can be resized independently of the main previews and can be zoomed in even further than before.

In addition to the Preview Styles tab a brand new List Styles tab has been added. Instead of previews this detail tab shows a meta data list of a font family. It’s a more compact overview of the font files and styles in a family, such that you’ll get finer control over managing your fonts.

And Typeface is now available in Czech 🇨🇿 Many thanks to Ivan Berka for translating. Na zdraví!

Refinements

It’s time for some early spring cleaning!

Typeface 3.8 polishes the user interface in many ways to make everything more consistent and easier on the eyes. No rigorous changes, no worries, just making sure everything is pixel perfect. Contrast has been increased to improve legibility, activation indicators have grown a tad larger and our beloved fox has been tweaked a bit with a new lighting setup.

And for the type nerds: the Features tab now supports Apple Advanced Typography — you can preview and enable all typographic features available in TrueType fonts. Additionally, named instances are now visible for variable fonts. This allows you to snap to and select predefined variations (such as light, regular, bold, narrow, expanded etc.) with the variable sliders.

Finally, speaking of cleaning up, this release drops support for macOS 10.12, 10.13 and 10.14 — Typeface 3.7.2 will remain available for those of you still stuck on the older macOS versions.

Enjoy!

Variable Google Fonts

Expand your library with new variable fonts from Google Fonts!

This update brings many improvements to the automatically updated Google Fonts catalog. Now you get access to more than 250 variable font families synced to your Mac. With fonts offering various parametric variable axes the creative possibilities are almost limitless. And the fonts are automatically categorised with style tags.

Downloading variable fonts is optional — you can pick between preferring static, variable or all fonts. And you can choose where to store the Google Fonts library on your Mac. If you’ve already imported the Google Fonts library you can right click on the location in the sidebar and change your preferred download format in the ‘Sync Options’ submenu.

Typeface can import fonts from any location, including external disks. If you keep your fonts on an external disk you may have noticed that the app automatically removes the location when the disk is disconnected and the fonts cannot be accessed. This has been improved such that missing locations stay imported, so you don’t have to import them again when they become available.

And last but not least: Typeface is now available in French 🇫🇷 très bien! Big thanks to Nicolas for translating. Enjoy!

Family Editor

Don’t you hate it when you’re neatly organising your font library only to discover that some fonts are not properly grouped into the correct family? Separate font variants (regular/bold/italic) may each show up as separate families. Or maybe you have multiple foundry versions of the same typeface, and you need to be able to choose which specific family to activate.

The all new Family Editor allows you to fix all these family problems! You can dive in there and batch adjust the family of each individual font. Or use the smart suggestions feature to quickly apply automatically suggested family merges and splits.

Note: the font files that contain the actual family information are not touched. That means that family changes are only visible in Typeface, not in other apps.

But that’s certainly not all: there are multiple improvements to the Duplicates Finder, including the ability to select duplicates by folder. And Typeface is now fully translated to German by Karsten Müller 🇩🇪 Viel Spaß!

Lots of small improvements in this update to make certain features easier to discover for new users and advanced options quicker to access for veterans.

You can now press & hold on many buttons to get access to context menus. This works for all toolbar buttons, sidebar headers, activation indicators, collected fonts and OpenType filters. Furthermore the search field has been improved, you can type to scroll to a specific font in the grid and you can customize the toolbar drop action. Try them out to improve your workflow — enjoy!

Font Switch

Say goodbye to those finicky font pickers. Typeface 3.4 allows you to directly switch fonts in design apps by dragging and dropping fonts. Select some text in your design document and drag a preview from Typeface onto the document.

Typeface handles activation if necessary and changes the font of your selected text. All automated-so you don’t have to struggle with font names anymore and can spend more time being creative.

Learn more

Reconnect external locations

For those of you that import fonts from an external location Typeface can now keep your locations and fonts imported even if the external location is disconnected. When you’ve imported fonts from a shared server and you’re on the go the fonts will not be accessible anymore. These missing fonts are normally removed automatically, but if you disable Settings > Library > Remove Missing Fonts the fonts stay imported. Whenever the location is available again the fonts are reconnected and ready to be previewed right away.

And lots of other goodies to play with in this update. Use the new display toggles in the preview input modal to change preview settings such as alignment, font smoothing, outlines and more. A new underline display option has been added to preview something that needs some extra emphasis and protected system fonts are now recognizable by a small lock icon.

Have fun :)

Typeface is nu beschikbaar in het Nederlands!

That didn’t make sense? It means that Typeface has been translated and is now available in Dutch. If your macOS system language is set to Dutch Typeface will be localized accordingly.

Since the app is now fully localizable it’s ready for other languages as well. Want to help with translating Typeface? Contact support for more information.

In addition to these new fancy Dutch words Typeface 3.2.2 contains some nice improvements and fixes. Including a much requested feature to prefer certain font formats when Import Duplicates is turned off.

When this setting is disabled the app will skip importing a font if another font with the same name is already imported. Previously the app would pick the first font it found, which could be any format. Now it sorts new font based on format preference and picks the best one available: OTF fonts are preferred the most. If that’s not available TTFs are picked, followed by WOFF web fonts. And if there is nothing else older PostScript Type 1 fonts are imported.

Note that this only happens for entirely new imports. Already imported fonts are always preferred, in order to preserve all their tags. So if you have a WOFF font imported and later add a TTF variant, the WOFF one will stay imported.

Veel plezier!

Clean up your library and get rid of needless copies. Choose File > Find Duplicates… from the main menu to open the brand new Duplicates panel.

This panel allows you to find all duplicate fonts and optionally remove them from your Mac. Typeface can auto select duplicates for removal based on format preference, so you don’t have to go through all of them manually.

Learn more about this new feature in the Finding and Removing Duplicates article.

Got one of those shiny new M1 Macs?

Typeface now has native support for Apple Silicon! Even though the app already ran perfectly on Rosetta, going native makes everything just a tad bit faster. So I hope you’ll enjoy even better performance and efficiency on your M1 Mac!

Also managed to fix some bugs and added some quality-of-live improvements, even if you’re still on an Intel Mac :)

Proudly presenting the biggest update ever: vastly improved internals, awesome performance and great new features!

Some features require Typeface Pro (single in-app purchase). You’ll get a personal discount offer inside the app to upgrade.

Interaction

Text Layouts

OpenType features

Some features are not supported on macOS 10.12 — salt ornm rand titl fwid qwid vkna nalt jalt

Variable Fonts

For variable font examples check v-fonts.com

Quick Attach

Importing

Activation

Search

Other

Typeface 3 drops support for macOS 10.11 El Capitan.

Tweaks and fixes for macOS Big Sur!

Added macOS Catalina support and dynamic previews, available through the dropdown menu when changing preview text.

Expand your library with 2000+ free fonts from the Google Fonts catalog. When imported Typeface keeps the fonts up-to-date so you’ll automatically get the latest fonts when they’re added to the catalog.

Typeface just got a whole lot better! Introducing Typeface 2: Improved font management, more smart features and still a lovely simple UI.

Import

• Typeface now supports importing directories. Choose File > Import or press CommandO to import a directory or drag and drop a directory from Finder onto Typeface app.
• Imported directories are automatically synced on each start (new fonts are added, removed fonts are deleted from Typeface).
• Typeface will automatically import fonts from Font Book on each start.

Sidebar

• Brand new sidebar with (custom) tags
• To open/close the sidebar: swipe right/left with two fingers, use the new sidebar button in the toolbar or press Command/
• The sidebar automatically opens when you drag fonts towards it, so you can keep it closed if you want.
• Create new tags by using the + button on the sidebar or press CommandN.

Tags

• The tags implementation in Typeface is very flexible: you’re able to create nested tags, combine tags, subtract tags and invert tags.
• Nest tags: simply add the / character to a tag name to create a nested tag, e.g. “projects/company”. You can nest multiple levels deep.
• Combine tags: Command click multiple tags in the sidebar to combine.
• Subtract tags: Use the Search field to narrow down your visible previews. The search field autocompletes tags when you start typing the # character.
• Invert tags: Option click on a tag in the sidebar to invert it, e.g. ‘Activated’ becomes ‘Deactivated’
• Typeface will automatically add style tags to imported fonts (script/sans etc.)
• The previous Quick Collection is automatically restored on start (#saved-quick-collection)

Selection

• The Quick Collection is still here as a ‘persistent’ version of selection.
• To support a more traditional ‘selection’ workflow, you can toggle the ‘Collection Priority’ mode in Settings.
• Drag all your collected fonts by holding down Command and drag.
• Use CommandA / CommandShiftA to collect all / uncollect all.
• Hold CommandShift and click to collect a range.
• Use the ‘Edit’ menu to batch apply tags to all your collected previews.

Dragging

• You can drag fonts to tags in the Sidebar to attach that tag to the dragged font(s).
• Hold Option to remove the tag from the dragged font(s).
• Hold Command to drag all collected fonts in the current view.
• When dragging the sidebar will automatically highlight already attached tags.
• When dragging in ‘Collapse Families’ mode, you’ll automatically drag all fonts in the family.
• If you drag fonts to the ‘Activated’ tag the dragged fonts will be activated (if you hold Option the fonts will be deactivated).

Toolbar

• Added dedicated search field.
• Moved preview input to ‘Aa’ button (you can also summon the preview input by pressing CommandL or the Spacebar key).
• Changed tracking modifier key to Option (previously Command).

Compare

• You can right click a preview to start comparing.
• Added Quick Collection drop down in compare bar (click blue font name in compare bar to quickly switch between collected fonts).

Font Info

• On the detail view a new ‘Info’ tab is added, which shows basic font information.
• Below the table the currently added tags are available, you can click on user tags and remove them. System tags (the second row) cannot be removed.

Auto Activation (experimental)

• Auto Activation is available for supported apps, you can turn it on in Settings.

Enjoy!

• Added High Sierra compatibility

BATCH ACTIONS!

This update brings you multiple actions that let you organise all your fonts at once:

• Activation: activate/deactivate all fonts in the current collection
• Collections: add multiple fonts to an existing collection, the Quick Collection or a brand new collection
• Clear: remove all the fonts in the current collection in a single sweep

Together with the previous update which introduced quick selecting fonts with Command-click, your typography workflow will be faster than ever: Add the fonts you like to the Quick Collection, switch over to the Quick Collection (new shortcut: Command3), then save as a new collection (CommandShiftN)

Also included in this update:

• multiple new keyboard shortcuts
• changed the preview field placeholder to be more intuitive
• added support for the new CMD-click shortcut in Family view
• removed click delay when clicking on a source tab while it animates
• fixed issue when adding fonts to favourites in Sierra
• fixed issue when adding fonts to Quick Collection in Family view
• fixed some inconsistencies when deactivating a font in the Quick Collection

Typy McTypeface is back with another free update:

• Support for macOS Sierra!
• Made preview cells even more compact
• Added a quick new shortcut to add/remove fonts to the Quick Collection: just Command-click a preview :)
• Improved visibility of Quick Collection indicator
• Fixed bug when scrolling with up and down arrow keys during transition

Print and export to PDF is here! Now you can send your hand-picked font collection to your client, boss and colleagues for review. Or be OldSchoolCool and let your printer turn that beautiful blank white paper into even more beautiful font preview sheets 8-) Speaking of old school… Still have some PostScript Type 1 font suitcase files laying around from back in the day? Yep, from now on Typeface will preview those too.

• Export your fonts to a beautiful PDF
  • Keep it digital and choose File > Print… > PDF (in lower left-hand corner of the print panel)
  • Or choose to print that sexy typography to paper
  • Support for multiple font overview or single font detail
• Added support for PostScript Type 1 fonts
• Added Thai language pangram, ไม่เป็นไร
• Added option to prevent loading duplicate duplicate fonts fonts (on by default)
• Decreased minimum preview point size to 8pts
• Fixed collection dropdown menu position when using a secondary screen
• Prevent blank previews when you enter a space into the preview input

This update brings some convenient new features to Typeface: Find fonts faster with the all new Font Filters, better browsing with Auto Sizing previews and handy predefined pangrams.

• Filter fonts by weight, width, slant and style
• Added magic Auto Size option to make all previews the same size for even better comparing
• Added common preview options and pangrams
• Tracking is now always visible in the toolbar - it’s also a toggle to change to the tracking slider
• Improved legibility of font names
• Added a secret-but-not-really-hidden review/rating panel with awesome animations
• Easily remove active filter from the toolbar
• Improved preview position when adjusting the tracking
• Control-click now behaves the same as right-click
• Various theming fixes: loading screen, font titles and indicators
• Deactivating font collections (.dfont, .ttf) from system tab removes all associated previews
• Improved minimal fox icon
• Previews will not be stuck in compare mode after restarting the app

• Added Thanks & Acknowledgements to About window
• Fixed missing fonts in system tab if font does not contain a family name
• Fixed launch issue if the Time format in System Preferences was changed by the user

Your requests have been heard (thanks!) and Typeface delivers with the two most-wanted features: Font activation & persistent settings!

• Font activation & deactivation (no need to launch FontBook anymore, hurray)
• Persistent settings across app launches (Don’t know why this wasn’t included before and can’t think of an excuse. Maybe because errrm… the, you know… errrm… Nope got nothing.)
• Added a User fonts collection, which shows the active fonts not in system locations
• Fixed font sorting in collections, because a b c d is better than b d c a
• Fixed dragging app window to a split view space
• Fixed outline color for missing characters
• Fixed crash when loading characters of certain formatted fonts

A quick maintenance release to polish it all up a bit.

• Made fox icon a bit more friendly, I swear she’s a good girl!
• Fixed fuzzy fox icon on retina screens when no fonts are found
• Fixed incorrectly positioned previews when using Typeface on a non-retina external screen connected to retina MacBook, thanks for reporting :)
• Improved speed of loading large directories and added a cancel button for the impatient
• Fixed greyed-out display options icon after loading directories
• Fixed crash when removing duplicated fonts from collections
• Fixed crash when loading a directory without permission

The first BIG update for Typeface, with awesome new features!

• Font Book collection integration. That’s right. Font. Book. Collections.
• A streamlined font selection & review workflow: 1) Browse your catalog and drag candidate fonts you like into the Quick Collection 2) Refine the selection by eliminating fonts 3) Only the best font survives
• T r a c k i n g support (hold down the Command button on your keyboard and s p a c e your letters like an astronaut)
• Decreased loading times of System fonts and Directory fonts
• Improved speed of “Hide Fonts Missing Glyphs” setting
• Keep scroll position when switching source (System/Directory/Quick Collection)
• Removed the Glyphs tab as it turned out to be confusing
• Fixed rendering glitch when quickly changing size after switching source
• Fixed ‘No fonts found’ theming when in Night mode. Sorry for the blinded eyes
• Fixed a one-in-a-million stability issue, hurray!
• Fixed a bug nobody has ever discovered, nor will anyone ever know about 8-)

• Fixed inactive menu items on app start

• First version of Typeface!
• Perfectly rendered previews from installed fonts or fonts in a directory
• Custom preview text & size that let you view the fonts the way you want
• List & grid overviews, focused on your collection
• Revealing all the little differences with font compare
• Unicode characters support
• Font glyphs grid
• Night mode
• Outlined previews
• Metrics overlay
• Standard & discretionary ligatures