Font Appearance
There are multiple view options available in Typeface to change the preview rendering of your fonts. These options help you determine differences between fonts or change the look of the app.
Preview content
Preview any text you want by pressing the [Aa] button in the toolbar. The dropdown arrow to the right of the preview input field provides some handy defaults such as the Latin alphabet, numbers, symbols and pangrams for multiple languages.
Preview size & tracking
You can change the point size by pinching with two fingers on your trackpad or magic mouse, or use the slider in the toolbar. To change the tracking (the uniform space between characters) hold the Options key while pinching, or click the numbers next to the slider to switch to the tracking slider.
View options
These options are available from the View menu.
Auto size
Some fonts are naturally larger than others. Because you’ll probably adjust for that in your designs by changing the point size, it makes sense to preview your fonts in approximately the same size as well. The Auto Size setting tries to adjust the size of all previews, such that you can compare them easily.
Metrics
Check the baseline, descender, cap-height and x-height of your fonts.
Font Smoothing
To increase the legibility and sharpness of fonts on screens with smaller resolution a technique called subpixel rendering can be applied. This techniques uses the red, green and blue pixel components of LCD and OLED screens to anti-alias text.
Outlines
View the glyph curves in detail by showing font outlines.
Ligatures
Ligatures are combinations of letters that are joined into a single shape to make them ‘connect’ better. Standard ligatures are generally considered an improvement to the text setting. Discretionary ligature are more stylistic.
Theme
Change the app theme to night mode to show white-on-black previews.
Font compare
Discover every little detail using Font Compare. Right click on a preview and choose ‘Compare’ to start the compare mode, or choose the ‘A/B’ button on the font detail view.
The compare bar below the toolbar allows you to toggle the overlay (A/B) or stop comparing (x). If you have collected some fonts you can quickly switch comparing between them by clicking the font name in the compare bar.
