Changelog

Version 1.1.287

Changed

• Only one FontDesk runs at a time. Launching it again brings the open window to the front. Two copies would share the same databases, and the second would release the first one’s activated fonts.
• The version is now 1.1. The third number is still the build, counted in days from 1 January 2026.

Fixed

• Undoing an install no longer deletes the file you installed from. Undo used to remove the original in your Downloads or library folder and leave the installed copy behind.
• WOFF and WOFF2 fonts now appear in libraries. Previously every web font was listed as unsupported. They are no longer offered for installation, since Windows cannot load them.
• Installing for everyone refuses a file whose name would replace another font’s registration — a download called Segoe UI.ttf could previously unregister Segoe UI itself. Fonts installed for everyone are usable straight away rather than after the next sign-in.
• “Install for everyone” is now in the undo history, and undoing an uninstall puts the font back for the same users and under its own name.
• Installing a font that is already installed is no longer recorded in History, so undoing a batch cannot remove fonts FontDesk did not install.
• Uninstalling a font Windows is still using puts its registration back instead of leaving an unregistered file behind.
• When two files claim the same family, the family now previews and installs the file that wins the conflict, not the one that loses it. Two identical font collections no longer flicker between one entry and two on successive rescans.
• FontDesk no longer closes when you select a font whose file has been deleted, or on any other unexpected error; errors are logged to %LOCALAPPDATA%\FontDesk\errors.log.
• Fonts activated for the session are released at the next start if FontDesk did not exit cleanly, and activating a set loads every style of each family, not only the regular.
• A face inside a collection (Cambria Math, MS PGothic) shows as itself in the detail pane, glyph map, comparison and specimen sheets, not as the collection’s first face. One damaged face inside a collection no longer leaves the collection half in the library.
• “Follow Windows” is no longer switched to Dark at startup on a dark desktop.
• The comparison overlay picks a new sample for each pair instead of keeping the last pair’s.
• The glyph map no longer mixes two fonts’ blocks when you move through the list quickly, and an OpenType feature toggle no longer draws its result under a different font.
• The family name shown for a font no longer changes between startup and the rescan after it.

Known issues

• Installing a batch for everyone asks for administrator approval once per font. Declining any one stops the rest.
• When a filter or library change leaves nothing selected, the detail pane can keep showing the previous font.
• Install and uninstall act on the face a family’s row shows, not on every style in the family.
• Previews are drawn at standard resolution, so they look soft with display scaling at 125% or more.
• Opening a very large block in the glyph map, such as CJK Unified Ideographs, pauses the window while every glyph is drawn.
• A deliberately malformed font can make a scan use a great deal of memory or time before it is rejected.

Version 1.0.240

Fonts and languages

• Reads TrueType, OpenType, TrueType/OpenType collections, WOFF and WOFF2 — including WOFF2’s transformed glyph table, which is not a decompression but a reconstruction from seven separate streams.
• Per-language coverage for Arabic, Urdu, Persian, Pashto, Sindhi, Kashmiri, Saraiki, Uyghur and Sorani Kurdish. Not “has Arabic letters” — whether the font has every letter that language needs.
• Joining-form and mark-positioning analysis, so a face that has the letters but cannot join them is not mistaken for one that works.
• Recognises pre-Unicode InPage-era fonts — the ones whose codepoints carry no Unicode meaning — and says so instead of showing rows of empty boxes.
• A face inside a collection is a font in its own right: it can be previewed, tagged and installed separately from its neighbours in the same file.

Looking at fonts

• Previews shaped with a real complex-script engine, so Nastaliq joins and reads as it will in a document.
• Each font is shown a sample it can actually render, chosen from its own coverage rather than from its name.
• In the detail pane, a specimen per script a face covers. Latin, Arabic and Urdu get phrases; every other language shows the letters it adds to Arabic, which is the part worth looking at.
• Size ladders, a complete glyph map, and an OpenType feature playground.
• Side-by-side comparison with an onion-skin overlay normalised by cap height, not by nominal point size, plus metrics, glyph-coverage and feature differences.
• Similar-font search and headline/body pairing suggestions, from your own library.

Organising

• Libraries — add a folder and read every font in it without installing anything.
• Sets you assemble by hand, and smart lists that keep themselves current.
• Tags, ratings, colours and notes, keyed to the font’s own content so they survive it being moved, renamed or reinstalled elsewhere.
• Faceted filtering, and a box that takes pasted text and shows only the fonts that can render all of it.
• A dashboard that says what the library holds: how much of it is installed, which languages it can set, its formats and foundries, and what is worth a look.

Installing

• Install for yourself with no administrator prompt, or for everyone with a single one.
• Temporary activation — a font usable in Word, InPage and everything else on the desktop until FontDesk closes, with nothing copied and nothing to uninstall. Released on exit.
• Safe uninstall that refuses to remove the faces Windows itself draws its interface with, and says which and why.
• Conflict detection for duplicate family claims and version mismatches.
• Undo history for every install and removal. Uninstalling keeps a copy first, so undo really does put the font back.

Making things

• Printable type specimens as real vector PDF — A4 or US Letter — and printing of the same sheet.
• Backup and restore of libraries, sets, tags, ratings and notes. Restoring merges rather than replaces, so work done since the backup survives it.

The window

• Light and dark chrome, or following Windows. Dark is grey rather than black or navy, so the only colour on screen is the type.
• A command palette on Ctrl+K reaching every command and every destination by name, matched by subsequence — adlib finds Add library.
• Ctrl+F focuses search, F5 rescans.
• Settings for the theme, the preview text and size, install defaults, the startup rescan, the specimen paper, and what the caches hold.

Notes

• FontDesk works entirely offline. It has no account, no telemetry, and makes no network connections of any kind.
• Type 1 (.pfb, .pfm) and legacy .FON bitmap fonts are recognised and listed, but not read. They are reported as unsupported rather than as damaged, because they are neither.
• The build number rises with every build, so a version reads 1.0.<days since 2026-01-01>. A release pins it.