FontLook

FontLook is a local Go-based web application that helps you discover, preview, and manage fonts on your system. This tool allows you to browse your local font files, generate previews, and convert fonts to both True Type Fonts (TTF) and Web Open Font Format 2.0 (WOFF2) formats. It's especially useful for managing large font collections and finding the ideal font for your projects.

Features

• Scan and discover fonts in specified directories
• Support for TTF, OTF, WOFF, and WOFF2 formats
• Real-time font preview generation
• Customizable preview text and font size
• Format conversion using Google WOFF2 Tools (TTF/OTF to WOFF2)
• Cached conversion results for better performance
• Dark/light theme toggle
• Fast, concurrent font processing with progress feedback
• Real-time font search and filtering
• Customizable grid layout (1-4 columns)
• Alphabetical sorting (A-Z, Z-A)
• Batch download all fonts (or filtered selection) as a ZIP file
• Virtual scrolling for handling large font collections (5000+ fonts)
• Paginated loading with infinite scroll

Prerequisites

Before installing the application, ensure you have:

• Go 1.27 or later.
• Optional: WOFF2 Tools. woff2_compress enables TTF/OTF to WOFF2 conversion, and woff2_decompress enables WOFF2 to TTF conversion. Font browsing works without them.

Installation

Option 1 Download the pre-built Binary files from Releases

# You will need to make the binary executable on macOS and Linux:

# Linux
chmod +x fontlook-linux-amd64
./fontlook-linux-amd64

# macOS
chmod +x fontlook-darwin-amd64
./fontlook-darwin-amd64

# Windows just open run the executable
fontlook-windows-amd64.exe

Option 2 Clone and Build

• Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/bradsec/fontlook.git
cd fontlook

• Download dependencies:

go mod download

• Build the application:

go build -o fontlook cmd/server/main.go

• Run from source:

go run ./cmd/server

Development

Frontend sources are written in TypeScript. The compiled JavaScript is committed because the Go binary embeds it, so Node.js is only required when changing frontend code. Use Node.js 24 LTS and npm 11 or later.

npm ci
npm run build
npm run typecheck
npm run lint
npm test
go test ./...

Configuration

The application can be configured using environment variables:

Variable	Default	Description
PORT	8080	HTTP server port
MAX_CONCURRENT	4	Maximum concurrent font processing operations
MAX_FILE_SIZE	52428800	Maximum font file size in bytes (default 50MB)

Running on a Different Port

# Linux/macOS
PORT=3000 ./fontlook

# Windows (Command Prompt)
set PORT=3000 && fontlook.exe

# Windows (PowerShell)
$env:PORT="3000"; .\fontlook.exe

Example with Multiple Options

# Run on port 3000 with 8 concurrent workers
PORT=3000 MAX_CONCURRENT=8 ./fontlook

Notes

• The application will automatically open in your default web browser
• You can manually navigate to http://localhost:8080 (or your configured port)
• The application creates static and logs directories beside the executable. It falls back to the current directory if it cannot resolve the executable path.
• Font conversions are cached for better performance
• Directory scans are cached for 30 seconds to improve responsiveness

Acknowledgments

• Google WOFF2 Tools for font conversion