What you get back
A WOFF2 file is a compressed wrapper around an ordinary desktop font. Unpacking it returns that font exactly, with the same outlines, metrics, kerning and features. It will be larger, because the web compression is gone: our test WOFF2 of 26 KB came out as a 63 KB TTF.
There is one catch. The font inside a WOFF2 is either TrueType (TTF) or OpenType with CFF outlines (OTF), and unpacking can only give you whichever it was. Refont reads this from the file before converting, so the format menu shows the honest answer:
- Menu shows "TTF"
- The font inside has TrueType outlines. Unpacking gives you a true TTF, losslessly.
- Menu shows "OTF"
- The font inside has CFF outlines. Unpacking gives you an OTF. If you need TTF specifically, pick "TTF (rebuild outlines)" and Refont redraws the curves, as on the OTF to TTF page.
Why people convert WOFF2 to TTF
- To install a font from their own website's font kit on a computer, to design with it.
- For game engines and apps that only read TTF or OTF, such as Unity.
- To open a web font in a font editor, which usually expects a desktop format.
- To check what a webfont kit actually contains before relying on it.
Web fonts are often cut down
WOFF2 files made for websites are frequently subset: characters the site never uses are removed to save bytes. A font unpacked from such a file will be missing those characters. When a converted font shows boxes for accented letters, it is usually a subset, not a broken conversion. The glyph count in the report tells you: a full Latin font usually has several hundred glyphs, while a tight English-only subset can have under 150.
Web optimization also sometimes strips hinting, which can make small text look softer on Windows once the font is installed.
Licensing matters most here
Converting a font doesn't change its license. Webfont licenses usually allow use on a website only, not installation on a computer. And a WOFF2 downloaded from someone else's website is their licensed copy: converting it for your own use is generally a license violation, whatever tool does it. Use this page for fonts you own or that are openly licensed, such as most fonts from Google Fonts. How font licensing works
Refont reads the font's own embedding setting and warns you when it is restricted, but that flag is only a hint. Your license agreement is what counts.
How we tested this
We unpacked WOFF2 files of TrueType, CFF and variable fonts, re-encoded them, and compared the results table by table. Unpacking is exact: apart from the glyph data that WOFF2 stores in its own rearranged form, every table came back byte for byte. Variable fonts kept all their axes.