ZFontManager 0.5.0

Browse and install nearly two thousand free fonts from inside the app, with a
live preview and the licence in front of you before you download. Plus a clear
answer, at last, to "why can't I turn this font off?"

Download for your platform below, or from https://zsync.eu/zfontmanager/

What's new

An online font browser. Switch it on under Settings → Online font browser
and an Online section appears in the sidebar with the whole Google Fonts
catalogue — 1,980 open-licence families. Search by name, filter by category,
licence, or variable-only, and add a family to your library with one click.
Downloaded families are tagged "Online" automatically and marked "In library"
in the browser afterwards.

See it before you take it. Open a family and your current sample text is
rendered live in that font. Below it: the designer, the licence with a link to
the full text, the Reserved Font Name where the OFL declares one, and the list
of files. The licence text is stored alongside the font when you add it.

Complete fonts, not web subsets. Files come straight from the google/fonts
repository — the canonical source everything else mirrors. You get the full
variable font with every script, not a per-language slice cut down for web
embedding. That's why Bunny Fonts and CDN-hosted copies aren't used: they
serve WOFF and WOFF2 subsets that Windows cannot install and that would put a
dozen partial copies of each style in your OS.

System fonts now say why they can't be turned off. On Windows and macOS,
the operating system owns its own fonts. Until now their cards showed a dimmed
toggle that looked switched on but did nothing. They now show a small "OS"
lock badge with the reason on hover — managed by the operating system, can't
be turned off. And the filter menu gains "Hide fonts the OS won't let you turn
off", so the library can show only what you can actually act on. On Linux,
where fontconfig can exclude any font, nothing changes — everything keeps its
toggle.

How the online browser handles your privacy

This is the first ZFontManager feature that contacts a real server, so here is
exactly what it does and doesn't do.

It is off by default. A fresh install never contacts a font provider.

Switching it on sends nothing. A request goes out only when you open the
Online section and search or download. There is no background refresh, no
check on startup, and no probe when you open Settings.

Search is local. The catalogue — about 440 KB — is fetched once from
api.fontsource.org and cached for seven days. Typing filters that cache on
your machine. The provider sees one request a week, not one per keystroke.

Two hosts, both named under the toggle: api.fontsource.org for the catalogue,
raw.githubusercontent.com for font files and licences. Every request passes
through one client that refuses if the setting is off, rejects any other host,
follows no redirects, and identifies itself as ZFontManager.

Nothing about your library leaves the machine. The "In library" badge is
computed locally. What those two hosts receive is your IP address, the
catalogue request, and the fonts you choose to download — nothing else.

The README's Privacy section carries a table of every feature that can open a
connection. This release adds the first row that says "Yes, leaves your
machine", with exactly what and to whom.

Fixed

• reqwest was built without a TLS backend. The Affinity integration only ever
  spoke plain HTTP to loopback, so it was never noticed, but any https://
  request would have failed at runtime. It now uses rustls with the operating
  system's own trust store on all three platforms.
• The install progress toast could stay on screen indefinitely when an install
  was started by anything other than a drag-and-drop. It now dismisses itself
  once the last file lands.

Platform notes

The online browser has no platform-specific code — it is HTTP, JSON and file
writes, then a call into the same import path drag-and-drop uses. Downloaded
fonts are activated exactly like any other import on each platform.

Affinity auto-activation and the Photoshop/Illustrator integration remain
Windows and macOS only, since that software has no Linux build.

Tested on Windows and Linux. macOS builds are best-effort and were not run on
real hardware before release. If something misbehaves on macOS, please open an
issue.

On Linux, use the .deb or .rpm. They install cleanly with your own system
libraries. An AppImage is not part of this release.

Contributing

Everything has to work on Linux, Windows and macOS, and any interface text has
to be translated into all nine languages — CONTRIBUTING.md explains both, with
the reasoning. Translations have a shorter guide in docs/TRANSLATING.md.

Downloads

Windows ZFontManager_0.5.0_x64-setup.exe 4.6 MB
ZFontManager_0.5.0_x64_en-US.msi 6.3 MB

macOS ZFontManager_0.5.0_aarch64.dmg 9.2 MB (Apple Silicon)
ZFontManager_0.5.0_x64.dmg 9.7 MB (Intel)

Linux ZFontManager_0.5.0_amd64.deb 7.7 MB
ZFontManager-0.5.0-1.x86_64.rpm 7.7 MB

SHA-256 checksums

55c94c40ed1c9296b33b4aec79f993da487b2a2d7361b9f569e2f50785c646f4 ZFontManager_0.5.0_x64-setup.exe
88093d58af33d372e0d5bf87995b3563b090eeeeb2ccb3eefd6a95137574e2bf ZFontManager_0.5.0_x64_en-US.msi
08cea92fe3ba993d4253453987ffb39e561dfaee7b8219dfb8e470345ceabbe5 ZFontManager_0.5.0_aarch64.dmg
a141ae33d151490625a742c957581114bbf4fafabafa55004ee284a22fc01811 ZFontManager_0.5.0_x64.dmg
76ae9f281fe30f2ced46352d517ec34ddfa52f2293f3b20ebfa66452123f6a7d ZFontManager_0.5.0_amd64.deb
6695f69721ddac7d9b00467be0d440cb477dbb262846a7885400381a4b9110f2 ZFontManager-0.5.0-1.x86_64.rpm

ZFontManager is free software under GPL-3.0.
https://github.com/TheHolyOneZ/ZFontManager