You'll need: FontCreator (Windows and macOS) and a finished or near-finished font project.

When your design is done, exporting is where it becomes a real, installable font — and the settings you pick decide whether your TTF, OTF, WOFF or WOFF2 works everywhere or breaks on someone's screen. This guide walks through every control in FontCreator's Export Settings dialog — the font editor's gateway to desktop (TTF/OTF) and web (WOFF/WOFF2) output — so you can choose with confidence.

How exporting to TTF, OTF, WOFF and WOFF2 works

To export the active project, open File → Export Font and pick a format — Desktop (.ttf/.otf) or Web (.woff/.woff2). All available OpenType layout features are embedded automatically. The first time you export, FontCreator asks where to save; after that, use File → Export Font As to choose a new location.

Tip: When you convert/export to WOFF2, FontCreator applies Brotli compression, so a WOFF2 web font is typically much smaller than the equivalent TTF or OTF — meaning faster page loads.

Note: Only glyphs marked as included for that export are written. To exclude glyphs, select them in the Font panel, right-click, and choose Include in Exports → None.

When you open an existing font, FontCreator pre-fills the export settings to match the original as closely as possible — a handy starting point when you're re-exporting someone else's file.

Walking through the Export Settings

Export (variable fonts only). This control appears only for variable fonts. Choose to export the variable font itself, the individual font masters, named font instances, or the current location (the design coordinates you're previewing). Most of the time you want the full variable font; use instances when you need static styles cut from the design space.

Outline Format. This decides the curve math inside your font.

• TrueType — quadratic Bézier curves. The safest, most compatible choice for most fonts.
• CFF (PostScript) — cubic Bézier curves, output as .otf.
• CFF2 — the variable-font-aware successor to CFF. Pick this to ship a variable font with PostScript-based outlines.

Tip: A TrueType-outline font can use either .ttf or .otf — choose .otf only if you need a specific compatibility behavior. Software determines outline type from the file's contents, not its extension.

Components. Composite glyphs (like accented letters built from parts) are efficient, but scaled, rotated, or transformed members can render incorrectly in some engines. Set this to decompose scaled to flatten those problem cases into simple outlines for maximum compatibility.

Contours. Overlapping contours are fine during design, but you'll usually want them resolved for static fonts. Watch out: for variable fonts, leave overlaps as-is — removing overlap per master can change point counts between masters and break interpolation.

Color. Choose how color data ships:

• No color — a plain monochrome font.
• COLR (layered glyphs) — layered color (COLR + CPAL).
• SVG without color palettes / SVG with color palettes — SVG-based color, optionally with CPAL.
• Both COLR and SVG — maximum reach across rendering engines.

Note: When CPAL is included, all your color palettes are stored in the font.

Glyph Names. Friendly names help you work and share feature code, but they add file size.

• Keep your developer names while iterating.
• Regenerate for release to apply recommended names — useful for accurate text reconstruction in some PDFs.
• Omit them to shrink the file, especially for WOFF.

Watch out: CFF-based fonts always require glyph names, so the omit option won't take effect there.

Hinting. Hinting sharpens rendering at small sizes.

• No Hinting — leave it out.
• Autohinting — FontCreator generates hints and sets the gasp table to grayscale rendering with grid-fitting, plus symmetric smoothing for ClearType subpixel rendering.
• Keep Original — preserve hinting that was already in the font.

Note: Hinting is not available for CFF outlines.

Open Contours. This section appears only when your font contains open contours — handy for single-line designs.

• Close — closes them for a spec-compliant font (the default).
• Exclude — drops open contours entirely.
• Single Stroke — TrueType-only; for software that supports single-line/stick fonts (Rhino, SolidWorks).
• Double Stroke — TrueType-only; reverses each path so most engraving machines can follow it.

Tip: Single- and double-stroke fonts look unfilled and odd in normal software — they're meant for engraving and CNC, not screen use.

Filename. Choose whether the exported file uses the family name only or includes the style name. Family-only gives one consistent filename across a family — convenient when shipping many static styles together.

Output Folder. Where files are written. Leave it blank and FontCreator shows a save dialog on first export.

Watch out: Don't export directly into the Windows fonts folder. Also, files locked by Windows (when the OS keeps a font in memory) can't be overwritten — uninstall the old font first.

Existing Files. Controls how FontCreator handles name collisions in the output folder, so you don't clobber files by accident.

Subsets (variable fonts only). Export multiple subsets from one variable font, each with its own default location — you can even extrapolate by extending an axis beyond its min/max. Any axis you don't list is sliced at its default value. See the subsetting tutorial linked below for a full walkthrough.

The 65,535-glyph ceiling

The OpenType specification caps a single font at 65,535 glyphs. If your project exceeds that, you'll need to split it or trim included glyphs before export.

Source and interchange exports

Beyond font binaries, File → Export offers formats that round-trip your project for other tools:

• Glyphs Source File — a .glyphs version 3 file. Most modern features — masks, path decorations, smart components — round-trip cleanly.
• UFO — a Unified Font Object directory.
• Designspace and UFOs — a .designspace plus one UFO per master, the standard variable-font interchange format.

Batch Export

Use File → Batch Export to export every open font at once as Desktop (ttf/otf), Web (woff/woff2), or All Formats. Each font uses its own saved export settings.

Recommended settings by scenario

A note on kerning

Modern fonts store kerning as pair-adjustment lookups in OpenType layout — and FontCreator ships kerning this way automatically. Note: The legacy kern table is no longer supported, so don't expect a separate kern table in your exports.

Before you ship any of these files, run a final QA pass — see Test & Validate Your Font Before Release for the full checklist.

Frequently asked questions

How do I export a WOFF2 web font? Open File → Export Font and pick the Web (.woff/.woff2) format. FontCreator applies Brotli compression on export, so the WOFF2 file is typically much smaller than the equivalent TTF or OTF.

TTF vs OTF — which should I export? A TrueType-outline font uses quadratic curves and is the safest, most compatible choice (.ttf). CFF (PostScript) outlines use cubic curves and are output as .otf. Note that software determines the outline type from the file's contents, not its extension, so a TrueType font can carry either extension.

How do I export a variable font (CFF2 vs TrueType)? For variable fonts, set the Export control to the variable font itself, then choose an outline format: TrueType for quadratic outlines, or CFF2 — the variable-font-aware successor to CFF — to ship PostScript-based outlines. Leave overlaps as-is so point counts stay consistent across masters.

What to read next

• Open & Export .glyphs Files (Glyphs round-trip) — round-tripping projects via .glyphs v3.
• Subsetting Variable Fonts with FontCreator — slicing and extrapolating axes on export.
• Test & Validate Your Font Before Release — catching problems before you ship.