Best Font Manager

[tobefirst ⚽️]

At my old job, we'd been using FontExplorerX for a number of years. Now that I'm not with them any longer, I have to purchase a font manager for myself. I'd like to know if there is something better for managing fonts. I'm aware of macOS's built in ability, and maybe I should revisit it, but in the past, I found it lacking. Is there something better than FEX these days? What are you using?

 

[Herbert123]

I have been using FontBase for a while now. Works fine, the free version is more than sufficient for my needs, and it is compatible with all three OSs I run: Windows, Mac, and Linux.

FontBase — a Free, Beautiful, and Fast Font Manager

FontBase is a font manager made by designers, for designers. Lightning fast, with beautiful interface, and totally free. Works on Mac and Windows.

fontba.se

 

[bousozoku]

I have been using FontBase for a while now. Works fine, the free version is more than sufficient for my needs, and it is compatible with all three OSs I run: Windows, Mac, and Linux.

FontBase — a Free, Beautiful, and Fast Font Manager

FontBase is a font manager made by designers, for designers. Lightning fast, with beautiful interface, and totally free. Works on Mac and Windows.

fontba.se

I should try that to see if it works well with Asian typefaces. I'm finally okay with what Apple produces, but it would be good to have one that works with Windows 10 and Catalina.

 

[Herbert123]

Works fine here, but the free version will only display the first gliphs of any font - which means (for example) Japanese Kanji cannot be inspected.

 

[MacGizmo]

I was using Extensis Suitcase Fusion, and loving it, up until they switched to a subscription model. I switched to RightFont about a year ago and haven't looked back. It's much more robust than Suitcase or FEX ever was, particularly when working with Adobe CC apps. It does have some minor shortcomings (not bugs, just features I want added or existing ones I don't like), but it's very stable, fast, reliable, and cheap at only $35 (currently).

 

[organicCPU]

@tobefirst, did you already decide for a font manager?
I've been following @MacGizmo's advice from this thread some times ago. So I'm utilizing RightFont 5 on one Mac and FontExplorer 6 on other Macs. RightFont does its work, but it's far less complex than FontExplorer. In FontExplorer I do like the list style, that gives me a perfect overview over many fonts, e.g. if I'm searching and comparing from hundreds or thousands of different fonts. I also do prefer how FontExplorer gives me in-depth information on every single glyph of a font and on the font itself. I prefer RightFont for its simplicity and for its really easy integration of repositories like Google and icon fonts, mainly for web development. I tend to use both on different machines for different tasks.

 

[tobefirst ⚽️]

@tobefirst, did you already decide for a font manager?
I've been following @MacGizmo's advice from this thread some times ago. So I'm utilizing RightFont 5 on one Mac and FontExplorer 6 on other Macs. RightFont does its work, but it's far less complex than FontExplorer. In FontExplorer I do like the list style, that gives me a perfect overview over many fonts, e.g. if I'm searching and comparing from hundreds or thousands of different fonts. I also do prefer how FontExplorer gives me in-depth information on every single glyph of a font and on the font itself. I prefer RightFont for its simplicity and for its really easy integration of repositories like Google and icon fonts, mainly for web development. I tend to use both on different machines for different tasks.

Thanks for asking. I haven't done anything yet as I got distracted by other work. I think I'll end up trying RightFont and, if that doesn't fit in my workflow, either paying for FontExplorer or FontBase.

 

[mealdy]

I use RightFont everyday and it works as advertised. I also tried the FontBase app, but since it's Electron based and not native macOS app, I found it was not running that smooth on my computer, and I didn't enjoy its UX.

 

[mlblacy]

I had been using Suitcase Fusion for years, which sucked but worked. Hard to believe anything could be worse. I needed something compatible with Quark and also Adobe products. Quark 2020 has its own font management, which is as bad as you would expect. FontBase does not support Type 1 fonts (seriously??), that was nowhere in their tech specs. RightFont works pretty well. My current solution is Apple's Font Book app with a library of my mostly used fonts, and then RightFont for on the fly add ins. Occasionally RF will balk on certain fonts and only partially activate or fail to activate them at all. I am stunned that the current font management world is worse that Adobe Type Manager v1.0 from eons ago.

 

[nebojsak]

I stick to the FontExplorer X Pro from the first free version. Tried some alternatives (free and paid) in the past, but found nothing more suitable for my needs.