FontPlop

FontPlop: Open a Font File and Actually See What Is Inside It

FontPlop is a free, browser-based font inspector and a large collection of text generators sharing one domain. The half that matters most to designers and developers is the viewer: drop a TTF, OTF, WOFF or WOFF2 on the page and you get every glyph in the file, a tester for your own text, the OpenType features it carries, its variable axes, the languages its character set covers, and a set of checks for the problems that bite just before release. Nothing is uploaded — the file is parsed on your own machine — which means you can safely open an unreleased or licensed font.

Key Features

• Full glyph inspection — Every glyph including unencoded ligatures and alternates, with code point, name, width and outline points.
• Nothing leaves your device — Fonts are read in the browser with open-source libraries; closing the tab discards the file.
• Metrics & checks — Flags missing characters, clipped vertical metrics, inconsistent naming and restricted embedding, explaining each result.
• OpenType features with CSS — Every feature tag with a before-and-after preview, toggles, and copyable CSS.
• Variable font support — A slider per axis, buttons for named instances, and the matching font-variation-settings.
• Converters and webfont output — TTF or OTF in; WOFF2, WOFF and ready-made @font-face CSS out.

What the Viewer Actually Tells You

Seven tabs cover the file. Glyphs lists everything in it, which is the quickest way to spot empty boxes or missing accents, and clicking a glyph gives you its code point, name, width and outline points — including glyphs with no Unicode value at all, like ligatures and stylistic alternates. Tester runs your own headline or paragraph at any size with a waterfall. Info surfaces the names and licence stored inside the file, which is worth more than it sounds when you inherit a font with no paperwork. Features lists every OpenType tag with a live before-and-after, so you can find the right stylistic set rather than guessing at ss01 through ss20. Variable gives you a slider per axis plus the named instances. Languages tells you which character sets the font covers and what is missing. Metrics & checks is the one that saves you: it tests for clipped vertical metrics, absent characters, inconsistent naming and a restricted fsType embedding flag, and explains what each result means instead of printing a code.

The Supporting Tools

Around the viewer sit several genuinely useful utilities. The webfont generator takes a desktop TTF or OTF and returns WOFF2, WOFF and the @font-face CSS to drop into a stylesheet. Compare Fonts overlays two faces, lines up their metrics and produces fallback CSS — the fastest way to pick a system fallback that will not shift your layout. There is a standalone OpenType features reference with live previews, a font statistics page, direct TTF-to-WOFF2 and WOFF2-to-TTF converters, and two teaching games: a kerning game that has you space letters by eye and then shows the designer's own spacing, and a Bézier game. The games are more instructive than they sound if you are learning type.

The Other Half of the Site

FontPlop is really two products under one roof, and it is worth knowing which one you have landed on. Alongside the inspector there are, by the site's own counts, 24 font generators, 27 copy-and-paste text styles, 8 social media tools and 7 text and secret-alphabet tools — tattoo and graffiti lettering, cursive and bold text for bios, a Wingdings translator, a rune translator, an invisible character generator. These are a different product for a different audience, and the distinction matters technically: the copy-and-paste styles are Unicode look-alike characters rather than typography, so while they will paste into an Instagram bio, they are not fonts and styled Unicode is read poorly by screen readers and renders inconsistently across platforms. The font generators are different again — they render your text in real Google Fonts typefaces and hand back a PNG.

Licensing and Privacy

Both are handled better than the category norm. Every font behind the generators comes from Google Fonts under the SIL Open Font License or Apache 2.0, which permit commercial use, and each font card links to its own licence and to the original family, so you can check before shipping something to a client. On privacy, the claim is consistent across the site: the text you type, the font files you open and the images you upload to the meme maker are all processed in the browser and never sent to a server. For the font viewer specifically that is the feature, not a nicety — it is what makes the tool safe to point at a foundry's unreleased file.

How to Check a Font

1. Drop a TTF, OTF, WOFF or WOFF2 onto the page, or try the bundled Inter variable file.
2. Scan the Glyphs tab for empty boxes, odd shapes and missing accents.
3. Paste real text into the Tester and read it at both small and large sizes.
4. Toggle ligatures, figures and stylistic sets in Features, then copy the CSS.
5. Read Metrics & checks before you ship anything.

Who It's For

• Type designers who want a quick sanity check on an export before release
• Developers converting desktop fonts to webfonts and needing the @font-face CSS
• Designers who have inherited a font file and need to know its licence and coverage
• Anyone picking a system fallback that will not shift their layout
• People who just want cursive text for a bio, who are also well served here

Conclusion

The font viewer is the reason to bookmark FontPlop. It does what a desktop font utility does — full glyph tables, feature inspection, variable axes, language coverage and pre-release checks — in a browser tab, for free, without the file ever leaving your machine. The site is honest about where it stops, telling you plainly that it is a first pass rather than a replacement for Font Bakery, and that .ttc collections and Type 1 fonts are out of scope. The generator half is a different product aimed at a different visitor, so ignore it if you came for the type tooling; the inspector alone earns its place.