Question 1

How do I permanently enable a stylistic set (ss01) or character variant (cv01) in a font?

Accepted Answer

Open the font in FontFreeze (https://mutsuntsai.github.io/fontfreeze/), check the features you want (for example ss01 or cv01) in the feature list, and click "Generate font!". The resulting font has those features baked in as default behavior, so they work even in apps without any font feature settings.

Question 2

How can I use font features like ss01 or cv01 in Visual Studio, Word or other apps that only let me choose a font family?

Accepted Answer

Such apps cannot toggle OpenType features, so the features have to be frozen into the font file itself. Use FontFreeze to generate a customized copy of the font with the desired features activated, install it, and select it by its new family name (by default suffixed with "Freeze").

Question 3

How do I permanently disable programming ligatures in a coding font such as Fira Code?

Accepted Answer

Most coding fonts define their ligatures in the calt feature. In FontFreeze, set calt (and liga if present) to deactivated and generate the font; the ligatures are removed from the output font regardless of the editor's settings.

Question 4

How do I convert a variable font into a static font?

Accepted Answer

Open the variable font in FontFreeze, pick one of its predefined instances or set each axis (weight, width, slant, etc.) manually, and generate the font. FontFreeze outputs a static TTF or WOFF2 instance at those axis values.

Question 5

Are my font files uploaded to a server?

Accepted Answer

No. FontFreeze runs fonttools in your browser through Pyodide (WebAssembly). All processing happens locally and nothing is uploaded.

FontFreeze

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How to use it