Font Downloader

A CLI to find and download Google Fonts. It consolidates TTF/OTF/TTC from the family ZIP or the google/fonts repo, adds all available WOFF/WOFF2 weights via the CSS2 API, writes OFL.txt, and generates an SCSS snippet.

✨ Features:

• Variable font detection - Automatically detects and handles variable fonts correctly
• Smart subsetting - Uses Google's optimized WOFF2 subsets (20-50KB per font)
• Optional TTF conversion - Convert TTF to WOFF/WOFF2 for full unicode coverage
• No duplicates - Intelligently avoids downloading the same file multiple times

Installation

From PyPI (recommended):

pip install fontdownloader

From source (development):

pip install -e .[dev]

Optional Dependencies

For TTF to WOFF/WOFF2 conversion (full unicode support):

pip install fonttools[woff,woff2] brotli

Commands

Search

fontdownloader search "Roboto"
fontdownloader search "Inter" --details  # Show variant details

Download one or more families (consolidated)

# Single font (Google's optimized subsets)
fontdownloader download "Inter"

# Multiple fonts
fontdownloader download "Inter" "Roboto" "Lora"

# From file (one name per line)
fontdownloader download --file fonts.txt

# Force reinstall
fontdownloader download "Inter" --force

# Convert TTF to WOFF/WOFF2 for full unicode coverage
fontdownloader download "Inter" --convert-ttf

What gets downloaded:

• TTF/OTF/TTC files + OFL.txt (from ZIP or google/fonts repo)
• WOFF/WOFF2 files via CSS2 API (all weights 100-900, normal/italic)
• For variable fonts: Downloads once per style (no duplicates!)
• SCSS file in assets/scss/<Family>.scss with proper @font-face rules
• All files in assets/fonts/<Family>/

Generate SCSS only

fontdownloader generate-scss "Roboto"

• Regenerates assets/scss/Roboto.scss based on current files in assets/fonts/Roboto/

Update Font Catalog

fontdownloader update-catalog
fontdownloader update-catalog --force  # Force update even if cache is fresh

Download Multiple Popular Fonts

fontdownloader download-all --limit 50
fontdownloader download-all --limit 100 --convert-ttf  # With TTF conversion

Output Structure

assets/
├── fonts/
│   └── Inter/
│       ├── Inter-normal.woff2          # Variable font (100-900 weights)
│       ├── Inter-italic.woff2          # Variable italic
│       ├── Inter[opsz,wght].ttf        # Full TTF (if available)
│       └── OFL.txt                     # License
└── scss/
    └── Inter.scss                       # @font-face rules

Font Formats Explained

Google's WOFF2 Subsets (Default)

• ✅ Small files (20-50KB per font) - Fast page loads
• ✅ Web optimized - Google's subsetting strategy
• ✅ No extra tools needed
• ❌ Limited unicode coverage (Latin, Cyrillic, Greek subsets)

TTF Conversion (--convert-ttf)

• ✅ Full unicode coverage (all languages)
• ✅ Offline use without Google CDN
• ✅ Good compression (60% vs TTF)
• ❌ Larger files (300-400KB vs 25KB)
• ❌ Requires fonttools installation

See FONT_FORMATS_EXPLAINED.md for detailed comparison and use cases.

Variable Fonts

fontdownloader automatically detects variable fonts (fonts with weight/style axes) and handles them efficiently:

Before (old behavior):

• Downloaded Inter-100-normal.woff2, Inter-200-normal.woff2, ..., Inter-900-normal.woff2
• All were identical files (duplicates!)
• 18 files × 25KB = 450KB wasted space

After (v0.2.0+):

• Downloads Inter-normal.woff2 once (contains all weights 100-900)
• Generates proper CSS with weight ranges: font-weight: 100 900;
• 2 files × 25KB = 50KB total

Examples

Basic web project (Latin characters only)

fontdownloader download "Inter" "Roboto"
# Downloads ~50KB of optimized WOFF2 files per font

Multi-language website (need Cyrillic, Greek, etc.)

fontdownloader download "Inter" "Roboto"
# Downloads all Google subsets automatically (~175KB per font)

Full unicode coverage (convert TTF)

fontdownloader download --convert-ttf "Source Code Pro"
# Downloads TTF and converts to WOFF2 (~350KB per font)

Notes

• No API key required. If ZIP download is blocked, falls back to google/fonts GitHub repo.
• Optional: Set GITHUB_TOKEN environment variable to raise GitHub API rate limits.
• Variable font support: Automatically detected and handled correctly.
• Smart caching: Font catalog cached for 24 hours to reduce API calls.
• The assets/ directory is gitignored by default.

Troubleshooting

"Missing characters in my downloaded font"

Google's WOFF2 subsets only include specific unicode ranges. Use --convert-ttf for full coverage:

fontdownloader download --convert-ttf "Inter"

"fonttools not found"

Install optional dependencies:

pip install fonttools[woff,woff2] brotli

"Downloaded many identical files"

Update to the latest version - variable font detection was added in v0.2.0:

pip install --upgrade fontdownloader

License

See LICENSE file.

Note: Downloaded fonts have their own licenses (typically OFL). See each font's OFL.txt file.