Top Glyphs Alternative: Discover Your Next Favorite Font Editor
Glyphs has long been celebrated as a powerful and intuitive font editor, praised for its smart approach to typeface design, multilingual support, and innovative features like color font creation and automatic OpenType features. However, for various reasons – whether it's budget constraints, operating system preferences, or a desire for different functionalities – many designers and typographers seek a reliable Glyphs alternative. This article delves into the best alternatives available, helping you find the perfect software to bring your typographic visions to life.
Top Glyphs Alternatives
If you're on the hunt for a new font editor that can match or even exceed Glyphs' capabilities, you're in the right place. From free and open-source options to professional-grade commercial software, there's a tool out there for every need.
FontForge
FontForge is a free and open-source typeface (font) editor program available for Mac, Windows, and Linux. It's a robust Glyphs alternative, offering comprehensive font creation capabilities, portability, and support for web fonts, making it an excellent choice for users seeking a powerful, no-cost solution.
FontCreator
FontCreator is a professional commercial font editor for Windows that allows you to create and edit TrueType and OpenType fonts. As a Glyphs alternative, it stands out with its powerful drawing tools tailored for typographers and graphic designers, including support for multiple font colors.
BirdFont
BirdFont is a versatile free and open-source font editor for personal use (commercial use requires a license) available on Mac, Windows, Linux, and BSD. It's a strong Glyphs alternative for creating vector graphics and exporting TTF, OTF, EOT, and SVG fonts, featuring excellent support for color fonts and direct OTF/TTF editing.
FontLab
FontLab VI is a powerful commercial all-around font editor for Mac and Windows. It's an excellent Glyphs alternative, enabling users to create, modify, space, kern, hint, and export desktop, web, color, and variable fonts with extensive customization and OpenType support.
FontStruct
FontStruct is a free, web-based font-building tool that allows users to quickly and easily create fonts using a drag-and-drop interface. For those seeking a simpler, browser-based Glyphs alternative for basic font creation, FontStruct offers an accessible entry point.
FontLab Studio
FontLab Studio 5 is a commercial, professional font editor for Mac and Windows, widely used by major typography companies. As a robust Glyphs alternative, it offers comprehensive tools for advanced font development.
Fontself Maker for Illustrator & Photoshop
Fontself Maker is a commercial plugin for Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop CC, making it one of the fastest and easiest ways to create OpenType fonts directly within your familiar design environment. It's an excellent Glyphs alternative for designers already integrated into the Adobe ecosystem, offering seamless color font support and plugin functionality.
TruFont
TruFont is a free and open-source font-editing application built with Python3, available for Mac, Windows, and Linux. It offers a straightforward approach to font editing, making it a viable Glyphs alternative for those who prefer open-source solutions and cross-platform compatibility.
Type light
Type light is a free personal version of the Type 3.2 font editor for Windows. It allows users to design, edit, and convert OpenType, TrueType, and PostScript fonts. As a lightweight Glyphs alternative, it's an ideal package for personal font projects.
Private Character Editor
Private Character Editor (PCE) is a free, built-in Windows utility that allows users to create up to 6,400 unique characters for their font library. While not a full-fledged font editor like Glyphs, it serves as a simple Glyphs alternative for creating custom symbols and special letters directly within Windows.
The world of font design software is rich and varied, offering numerous powerful Glyphs alternative options. Whether you prioritize free and open-source solutions, specific platform compatibility, or advanced commercial features like color font support and OpenType automation, there's an editor perfectly suited for your needs. Explore these alternatives and find the one that best empowers your creative workflow.