Editing and Drawing

•Better point selection and point-hover highlighting.

•Shift+Delete breaks a contour at the selected node.

•End nodes automatically close a contour when moved onto each other.

•Insert Contour tool: hold Shift to constrain the next point to 45° angles.

•Marquee zoom in and out for faster navigation.

•Curvature comb to spot uneven curves at a glance.

•Contour direction indicators in the editor.

•Cleaner editor rendering.

•Round Corners: replace sharp corners with circular fillets of a chosen radius, from the Glyph menu or as a Glyph Transformer step; outer, inner or both corners; masters stay compatible.

•Selections survive switching between point and contour mode; glyph-wide commands no longer change the selection; Undo returns to the mode of the edit it restores.

•Cap decorations: Glyphs-style caps with an origin anchor, the Fit option, caps with several contours, a selected decoration stays outlined, and a wider decoration bar with Fit, Source and Remove.

•The Join Contours step of the Glyph Transformer now merges overlapping contours.

•Glyph Transformer Scale: Preserve stroke thickness, with an amount, keeps every stroke at the thickness it had after scaling, on all masters of a variable font together.

•The Glyph Transformer transforms a composite glyph and its base glyph once, not twice, when both are in the range.

•Arrow keys move the selection 1 funit, Shift 10 and Ctrl (Cmd on macOS) 100, as in other font editors; Classic arrow key steps in the Options dialog brings back 10, Ctrl 1 and Shift 100.

•Alt+Left and Alt+Right no longer go to another glyph: Alt with an arrow key slides on-curve points along their handles. Use comma and period, or Ctrl+[ and Ctrl+] (Cmd on macOS), for the previous and next glyph.

•Delete, Backspace and Edit > Delete delete points the same way on Windows and macOS, keeping the shape of the remaining contour; Shift+Delete and Shift+Backspace break the contour.

•A click on a segment selects its two end points; a double-click inserts a point.

•Handles move along with their on-curve point, also at a corner between a line and a curve; the opposite handle of a smooth point keeps its length; Shift-drag moves points horizontally or vertically and keeps a dragged handle at its angle.

•Insert Contour tool, cubic contours: drag the first point for a smooth start, drag it again to shape the closing curve, a click after a dragged point makes a curve, Ctrl (Cmd on macOS) while dragging makes a corner, and the preview shows the next segment as it will be created.

•Measure tool: the distances between the points where the ruler crosses the outline are shown along the ruler, and its ends snap to points.

•Extend Corner works on corner points only. The small loop it leaves at an outer corner is removed from static fonts on export, and in a font with a single master it is not drawn as ink and Remove Overlap removes it.

•A cubic contour always starts at an on-curve point.

•Show Connection Lines is on by default.

•Windows: the title bar shows the days left in the trial.

Masks

•Any contour or component can be flagged as a Mask, subtracting from the geometry that precedes it — a non-destructive alternative to overlap removal.

•Masks are flattened automatically on export to TTF, OTF, CFF2, and UFO.

•Compound-path masks (rings, frames, donuts) subtract as single holes rather than full-area cut-outs.

•Mask-flagged components subtract; per-path mask flags survive when used as components in other glyphs.

•New Decompose with Mask command bakes mask subtraction into authored geometry in one step.

•Masks round-trip through copy/paste, undo/redo, the .glyphs format, and the FontCreator project file.

•Masks render consistently across the font overview grid, glyph thumbnails, live preview, OpenType Designer previews, printing, and Scanahand previews.

Anchors and Guidelines

•The anchor list can be reordered and sorted.

•Press G with an anchor selected to drop guidelines through it.

•Background layers carry their own anchors.

•Set Anchors (Ctrl+U) adds the anchors a glyph is missing, placed from its outline per script, and learns the font's own conventions from the anchors it already has; Recalculate Anchors (Ctrl+Shift+U) resets them. Both follow Edit Across Layers and place anchors on intermediate masters.

•Alignment Metrics: the lines at which the letters align (baseline, x-height, cap height and lines you add), with overshoot zones, per master, scoped to a script, case, category, suffix or glyph list; drawn and snapped to in the glyph editor; detected from the outlines; used by Set Anchors and exported as PostScript blue zones.

•Stems: the stem widths of the design, vertical and horizontal, per master, with a standard stem and scopes like the alignment metrics; detected from the outlines, edited in Font Properties, and used for PostScript stem hints and for scaling with the stroke thickness preserved.

•Show Anchors and Lock Anchors are remembered between sessions.

•The guideline colour can be changed on macOS too.

Variable Fonts and Interpolation

•Smart Components, with full per-master smart layers nested under their owning master.

•Smart-component names, axes, and per-master alternates round-trip cleanly through the .glyphs version 3 format.

•Detection and fixing of possible kinks between masters.

•PostScript names can be added to named instances (fvar).

•Anchors and metrics on smart layers take part in a smart component's variation; Glyph Properties edits a smart layer's side-bearings and advance width.

•Auto Attach: a Placement mode per member (Automatic, Automatic Horizontal, Manual), and a member's scale, transform and smart values are kept per master.

•The smart-component value editor accepts values outside the axis range.

Import and Export

•Import and export of selected glyph outlines to SVG.

•Export as CFF2.

•Option to export a single font filename with or without the style name.

•Full round-trip with .glyphs for strokes, masks, and corner and cap components.

•Export Desktop Font As and Export Web Font As always open the export dialog; Batch Export exports every open font.

•Blue zones travel with UFO, CFF and CFF2 fonts, and with .glyphs files.

•Stems travel with UFO, CFF and CFF2 fonts, and with .glyphs files; CFF and CFF2 exports carry stem hints.

•Variable CFF2 exports are smaller.

•Projects saved by this version store the alignment metrics and stems and cannot be opened by earlier versions.

OpenType and Unicode

•Unicode data updated to version 17.

•Updated OpenType script, language, and feature tag registries.

•Kerning is now shown correctly in the Font Test dialog.

•Improved RTL handling for unmapped RTL glyphs.

Interface and Workflow

•Improved merge contours.

•Redesigned Masters and Layers panel with full support for background layers, helper layers, color layers, reference artwork, and smart layers.

•Mask functionality moved into the Background Layer for a cleaner workflow.

•Background layers are now proper layers, inheriting outlines, metrics, anchors, selection, visibility, and color.

•The Samples panel has been removed.

•Rulers added inside the glyph edit area, now also available on macOS.

•Improved Text Tool, including clipboard support on macOS.

•Updated Preview All Instances icon.

•Filter by Tag: No Tag.

•Color swatches in the Masters and Layers panel are click-to-edit.

•Palette-entry picker available directly from color-member rows.

•Consistent toolbar and context-menu actions across Windows and macOS — Duplicate, Bring to Front and Back, Re-interpolate Position, Add Smart Layer, reorder, and more.

•New Helper Layer Properties dialog (name, opacity, color).

•Paint Bucket tool now works correctly and shows a live color swatch indicator. Right-click to change the color, Shift+click to open the Palette Manager.

•Native color picker with RGBA and hex input.

•Nineteen built-in Glyph Sets: WGL4, GB2312-80, the GF Latin, Cyrillic and Greek sets, Koeberlin Latin S to XL, and Adobe Latin 1-5, with coverage counts; your own sets go in the GlyphSets folder of the settings folder.

•Missing Glyphs dialog: see, filter and add exactly the members a glyph set or Unicode block lacks.

•Empty unencoded glyphs show the sample of the characters their glyph name stands for.

•The Masters and Layers previews show each contour or component in its place in the glyph, and a component as it looks in that master.

•The View menu has the same shape on both platforms, with Zoom and Navigation submenus; Guidelines Settings and Tags Settings are named the same everywhere; Tools > Import Image is the name of the image tracer on both platforms.

•Reference artwork has its own right-click menu and can be reordered from the Masters and Layers panel.

•The Font Validator only re-validates the glyphs that changed since the last run.

•Clearing the recent files list asks for confirmation.

•Export Glyph Properties writes glyph data to a file or the clipboard.

macOS-Specific Improvements

•View and edit color glyphs

•New Palette Manager dialog for full palette authoring.

•New Tags Settings dialog, plus a per-glyph Tag submenu in the glyph editor.

•Font and project files open from the Finder, by double-click or by dropping them on a FontCreator window.

•View > Panels toggles the Preview panel (Opt+Cmd+P) and the panels sidebar (Opt+Cmd+S); Opt+Cmd+F toggles Font Properties.

•Tools > Auto Update Metrics is available on macOS.

•Holding Space pans with the hand tool, as on Windows.

Stability and Reliability

•FontCreator no longer crashes during rapid font and panel switching.

 

A complete list of current and previous changes can be found online:

https://www.high-logic.com/font-editor/fontcreator/changelog