Installing FontForge

FontForge is libre software, so you can download, share and install copies without any restrictions on usage — both commercial or personal use is encouraged. It is a community-maintained application, and anyone can contribute to the source code.

FontForge is available in easy to install packages for Windows, Mac OS X and GNU/Linux operating systems.

Installing FontForge on Windows

An installation guide is available for the official Windows builds, prepared by Jeremy Tan.

Installing FontForge on Mac OS X

An installation guide is available for the official Mac builds, prepared by Dr Ben Martin.

Installing on GNU/Linux

The easiest method to get FontForge on your Linux machine is to use your Linux distribution’s package repository.

An installation guide is available for the official GNU/Linux builds.

Installing older versions of FontForge

Users who need an older version of Fontforge can look for stable releases here, and here, and older releases prior to 2012 here.

Compile your own version from GitHub

GitHub is a source-code hosting service where everyone can contribute to the development of a piece of software. It stores the current leading state of development of the application. In some cases, perhaps because you want access to a feature not yet available in the release packages, you may wish to compile your own version from GitHub.

Full instructions are at https://github.com/fontforge/fontforge/blob/master/INSTALL.md

Debugging the FontForge software

See the Debugging section for more information.