Why it exists
Most online font converters work by uploading your file to their server, converting it there and sending it back. For fonts that is a real problem: many commercial font licenses forbid copying the font to third-party services, so the upload itself can break the license before any conversion happens. And the result usually arrives with no word about what changed, even though some conversions, such as OTF to TTF, always change something.
Refont does the conversion on your own device and tells you what happened to each file.
How it works
The page loads small pieces of conversion code from this site, and your browser runs them in a background worker:
- WOFF uses your browser's built-in compression, so it needs no extra code.
- WOFF2 uses Google's open-source WOFF2 library, compiled to WebAssembly.
- OTF to TTF, TTF to OTF and Type 1 use fontTools, the Python library type designers and foundries use to build fonts, running in the browser through Pyodide. It is about 7.5 MB and loads only the first time you need it.
- Collections, dfont and EOT files are unpacked by Refont's own code.
Before releasing, we test each conversion on real fonts and open every result in fontTools to confirm it is valid. For outline conversions we also compare every glyph with the original.
Who makes it
Refont is built by MatrixInn Solutions, a small software house, which also makes the browser-based image converter CloudlessConvert. Refont isn't affiliated with any font foundry or font marketplace.
Bug reports, questions and suggestions are welcome on the contact page.