Migrating from FontExplorer X

Learn how to export your fonts and sets from the FontExplorer font folder and import them into Typeface, such that you can continue to use your current font library.

Import fonts from your FontExplorer library

If FontExplorer organised your font files you can find them in the FontExplorer font folder. This folder is typically located here: /Users/<username>/FontExplorer X/Font Library

Choose Preferences > Advanced in FontExplorer to find out where the font folder is located if it’s not stored in the standard location.

Typeface can import fonts from any location, so you can import this Font Library folder directly into Typeface. Choose File > Import > Fonts from Folder… and navigate to the Font Library folder, or drag and drop the Font Library folder to the Typeface window. Your font files will stay inside the Font Library folder, Typeface only links to that folder to import the fonts.

If you’d rather want to store your font files in a different location you can move (or copy) the fonts to a different folder on your Mac. Then import the new font folder into Typeface by dragging it to the Typeface window, or by choosing File > Import > Fonts from Folder…

Import your FontExplorer sets

Already neatly organized your entire font library using FontExplorer? Don’t worry, your sets can be migrated to Typeface tags so you can continue with the same font collections.

  1. Quit FontExplorer X
  2. Open Typeface
  3. Choose File > Import > Tags > FontExplorer X from the Typeface main menu
  4. Typeface automatically selects your FontExplorer X.fexdb if it’s located in the default folder
  5. Press Import to extract sets from the selected .fexdb data

If your .fexdb is not available you can also explicitly export your font sets from FontExplorer:

  1. Open FontExplorer X
  2. Create a local backup File > Local Backup > Create
  3. Export the sets but not the font files
  4. You’ll get a .fexconfig file
  5. Open Typeface
  6. Choose File > Import > Tags > FontExplorer X
  7. Navigate to your exported .fexconfig file

Typeface will show you the extracted sets from your FontExplorer data. If there are multiple categories you can choose which sets you want to import.

Your sets will be converted to tags and will be attached to currently imported fonts. So make sure you import your fonts first, then import the tags. You can always repeat these steps to reimport tags from your FontExplorer library.


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