
WhatTheFont – Shazam for Fonts - tiff
http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/
======
pbhjpbhj
AFAIK it's the best of its sort, but I've used it a few times (not for a few
years though) and I don't think I've ever found the actual font. Though of
course it finds similar fonts which sometimes can be enough.

~~~
lbotos
My secret used to be [http://www.typophile.com/](http://www.typophile.com/)
which had a font id forum and you'd get an answer from someone usually within
a few hours. It was a really cool place.

They were down for a while so I don't know if that community re-formed or not.

~~~
kswahl1
[https://www.reddit.com/r/identifythisfont](https://www.reddit.com/r/identifythisfont)
works fairly well.

~~~
cobalt
whatTheFont also has a forum that you can automatically post to if the auto
search doesn't find anything

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seahcb
Hey, I'm part of the team that made this, and you have the wrong link. This is
our new mobile app:
[http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/mobile/](http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/mobile/)

It's powered by deep learning, and it's way better and more accurate than the
current desktop version that's linked here.

~~~
slig
Why the mobile version is "way better and more accurate" when, I believe, most
people wanting to know the name of a font are people working on a computer?

~~~
detritus
Absolutely - I've used 'WTF' quite a lot over the years, never once from a
mobile, nor can I imagine ever doing so.

I'm certainly not going to start taking photos of my monitor here, anyway!

Odd.

~~~
Aardwolf
Normally I'm not the fan of unneeded mobile app dependence of things (e.g.
home lighting). But in this case, taking photo of your computer monitor and
getting font name as result seems more convenient than taking screenshot,
cropping, uploading, etc...

~~~
slig
If you're on a Mac, try Command + Shift + 4 to take a screenshot with a crop
tool that's saved on your ~/Desktop folder.

~~~
indubitable
The Windows equivalent (it sounds like) is Snipping Tool. Start -> Snip will
show it. Or you can navigate to it under accessories. Extremely handy.

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bschne
There's also this, which allows you to answer a series of questions to
identify a font - very useful if you don't have a suitable image, e.g. only a
photgraph of a sign or something like that.

[http://www.identifont.com/](http://www.identifont.com/)

------
tacon
I ran through the online font identifier tools just a few days ago, doing a
React exercise for a credit card component (dress it up with CSS!). I used
Snipping Tool to take an image of the PDF image, and went looking for the
font:

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/erd4nuoavxun2rr/BigBankFont.PNG?dl...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/erd4nuoavxun2rr/BigBankFont.PNG?dl=0)

I googled for free online font identification, and started testing.
WhatTheFont completely chokes and returns zero candidates, even after moving
the dot and the lower i into one glyph, identifying glyphs, etc. Next up,
FontSquirrel Matcherator, which initially failed, though it at least showed
candidates. I noticed that the FontSquirrel button was not on, so I clicked it
and retested. At the top of the results was Fira Sans, oddly without any
sample of the font. (hiding in plain site?) And it is Fira Sans, available on
Google fonts. Font Squirrel uses the FontSpring Matcherator, so I tested at
their site, and failed. No extra options to turn on to find Fira Sans.

Font Squirrel is now my favorite font site. And where is the site that runs
these engines through all the Google fonts to see who is honest?

------
subbz
Wow, this was never featured on HN? I use WhatTheFont since ages, helped me a
lot!

~~~
MrZeus
It was, you can get a history of submissions for a domain by clicking the
domain name to the right of a HN article title.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=myfonts.com](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=myfonts.com)

~~~
wanderingstan
Didn't know that.

Looks like WTF was first submitted 3444 days ago -- nearly 10 years!

------
alpb
Check out WhatFont Chrome Extension:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/whatfont/jabopobgc...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/whatfont/jabopobgcpjmedljpbcaablpmlmfcogm)

I think it's 10 times more useful even though you’re not a designer/frontend
type of a person and just curious about fonts that are shown in your browser.
Obviously doesn’t do what WhatTheFont does, but I think it's a lot more
practical.

WhatTheFont has been exactly the same since like 2009 if my memory serves
correctly. So this is nothing new.

~~~
mark-r
What's wrong with using Chrome's built-in Inspect?

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intoverflow2
Doesn't this predate Shazam? Isn't it more a case that Shazam is WhatTheFont
for music?

~~~
SOLAR_FIELDS
Probably, if your criteria is date of establishment to make such a statement.
I gander for most it’s instead popularity and ubiquity

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superasn
It's a great program to write when you start learning machine learning, kinda
like the next step to OCR.

Since it's hacker news just wondering what would be the best ML program to do
it? Also as for datasets I think you can just download a huge ttf library from
the net and write a program to render them into png files.

~~~
amelius
If you want to take it a step further: there's an app ([1]) that allows you to
aim your smartphone camera at a sign, and it will identify the font, translate
the sign to a different language, and edit the image with the translated text.
All in real time.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2OfQdYrHRs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2OfQdYrHRs)

~~~
XaspR8d
I'm not intimately familiar with this app, but I've used Google's version
quite a few times. I don't think either really identifies the font much more
than separating into a few different categories (e.g. serif vs sans). Not to
mention, it struggles with more decorative typefaces.

That said, this tech has been around for years and I still think it's magic
every time.

~~~
zeratax
checking the description, I think it is now google translate.

------
castis
Shouldn't Shazam be the WhatTheFont for music?

~~~
CamelCaseName
It looks like Shazam [0] and WhatTheFont [1] [2] were both released around
1999. That said, Shazam's 1 billion + downloads indicate to me a success far
greater than WhatThefont's.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shazam_(service)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shazam_\(service\))

[1]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20000818111401/https://www.myfon...](https://web.archive.org/web/20000818111401/https://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/)

[2] [http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/](http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/)
(the copyright date)

------
mvarrieur
Here is one that works for text on a page for webfonts, I find myself using it
all the time:
[https://fount.artequalswork.com/](https://fount.artequalswork.com/)

~~~
mvarrieur
Since that page doesn't seem to be loading, here is a gist with the relevant
bookmarklet. You click it once to turn on Fount, click a piece of text on the
page, and it will show you in the top right the font-family, font-size, etc.
(as it actually rendered on your machine vs. what the CSS says it should do):

[https://gist.github.com/mvarrieur/444e8e45c31f241e5b37334d94...](https://gist.github.com/mvarrieur/444e8e45c31f241e5b37334d940c2c67)

~~~
maaaats
Firefox devtools got this built in. Just inspect an element, select the Fonts-
tab.

------
yoeriboven
This has been around for ages.

~~~
robin_reala
17 years now:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20000818111401/https://www.myfon...](https://web.archive.org/web/20000818111401/https://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/)

~~~
wanderingstan
So really, Shazam is the WhatTheFont for music.

------
rajatdeep
To get latest technology app refer:
[https://www.producthunt.com/posts/whatthefont-2](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/whatthefont-2)

------
mproud
Nothing new here… we’ve had this for almost a decade

------
smpetrey
Not the most effective tool, but it's the only on we got. I wish WhatTheFont
got a neural network update.

Not completely unrelated:
[https://erikbern.com/2016/01/21/analyzing-50k-fonts-using-
de...](https://erikbern.com/2016/01/21/analyzing-50k-fonts-using-deep-neural-
networks.html)

------
anandvijay619
Hello everyone... this app has been around for many years but not
DeepLearning. This app uses DeepLearning to predict the right font. Please
give the app a try on real life cases and share your feedback again. We are in
process of continuously improving the predictions.

------
nerdponx
Funny this was posted today, I literally just had this idea about an hour ago,
after coming across
[https://reddit.com/r/identifythisfont](https://reddit.com/r/identifythisfont)

Glad to see the smart people aren't slacking in being smart.

~~~
freshyill
This has been around for many, many years.

~~~
fredoliveira
The mobile app has literally just been launched.

~~~
gattilorenz
Re-launched maybe. I had the iOS apps years ago.

------
rosseloh
I used to use this and Identifont all the time when I worked in a print shop.

You wouldn't believe how many people would bring in a crap-quality printed
copy of something and say "I want my invite/card/printout to look EXACTLY like
this one". WhatTheFont saved the day many a time.

------
MrJagil
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8402356](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8402356)

Their forum, especially the user "Tecnotronic", represents WhatTheFonts real
value.

~~~
mark-r
Tecnotronic is a machine. I don't think he sleeps, I haven't found a moment of
the day when he isn't posting. I've done a fair number of IDs myself, but he's
off the charts.

------
foobar123456789
probably the news is the mobile app, not the site

[https://itunes.apple.com/it/app/whatthefont/id304304134?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/it/app/whatthefont/id304304134?mt=8)

------
ElectronShak
I like to identify fonts in a web browser, say the font used on a particular
site. I use a chrome app called WhatFont (chrome is the browser i use most).
It does the Job,..at least till next year when chrome apps will die.

~~~
lottin
With Firefox, right click -> Inspect element, does the same thing

------
moderation
I'm a fan of the [https://www.typesample.com/](https://www.typesample.com/)
bookmarklet.

------
unabst
I've been using this:

[https://www.fontspring.com/matcherator](https://www.fontspring.com/matcherator)

------
rbanffy
Meh... [https://imgur.com/a/BSrL2](https://imgur.com/a/BSrL2) ;-)

~~~
mproud
Doubtful you would ever see bitmap fonts working here. MyFonts doesn’t usually
sell bitmap fonts either.

------
davidp670
Is there any kind of percentage match info? Like this is a 90% match or is it
pretty binary?

~~~
mark-r
It just gives you a list of possible matches, it's up to you to inspect them
to see if any are accurate. A true match is more likely to be at the top of
the list though.

------
brianbreslin
Isn't this like 8 years old?

~~~
mproud
Sounds about right.

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digitalmaster
This is so old and rarely works.

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divanvisagie
It struggles with their own logo, which it reads as "4w"

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Y7ZCQtNo39
Looks like a great machine learning problem.

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ronreiter
Too bad it's not actually needed for websites since you can right click ;)

