How to Change FontForge Interface Language

You can change the interface language in FontForge to match your preferred localization. Because FontForge relies on the GNU gettext library for localization rather than a traditional in-app dropdown menu, the interface language is typically determined by your operating system's locale settings or environment variables. This guide outlines how to adjust your language settings across Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Windows

On Windows, FontForge usually adopts your system's primary display language. To force FontForge to use a specific language without altering your entire operating system, you can use an environment variable.

  1. Open the Start Menu and search for Environment Variables, then select Edit the system environment variables.
  2. Click the Environment Variables button near the bottom of the window.
  3. Under User variables, click New.
  4. Set the Variable name to LANGUAGE or LC_ALL.
  5. Set the Variable value to your desired language code (for example, fr for French, de for German, ja for Japanese, or es for Spanish).
  6. Click OK on all dialog boxes to save the settings, then restart FontForge.

Alternatively, you can create a simple batch file (.bat) to launch FontForge in a specific language:

set LANGUAGE=fr
start "" "C:\Program Files (x86)\FontForgeBuilds\fontforge.exe"

macOS

On macOS, you can set language preferences per application through system settings or launch FontForge via the Terminal.

Using System Settings:

  1. Open System Settings (or System Preferences).
  2. Navigate to General > Language & Region.
  3. Scroll down to the Applications section and click the + (Add) button.
  4. Select FontForge from the application list and choose your desired language.
  5. Relaunch FontForge.

Using Terminal: You can also launch FontForge with a temporary language override by opening the Terminal and running:

LANGUAGE=de /Applications/FontForge.app/Contents/MacOS/FontForge

Linux

On Linux distributions, FontForge directly respects your shell locale variables (LANG, LC_MESSAGES, or LANGUAGE).

To launch FontForge in a different language from the terminal, specify the locale variable before executing the application:

LANGUAGE=es_ES.UTF-8 fontforge

or:

LC_MESSAGES=fr_FR.UTF-8 fontforge

To make this permanent for your desktop launcher, edit the FontForge .desktop file (typically located in /usr/share/applications/ or ~/.local/share/applications/) and modify the Exec line:

Exec=env LANGUAGE=es fontforge %U

Available Languages

The interface will only change if a translation file (.po / .mo) exists for your chosen language in the FontForge installation directory. If a translation is incomplete, FontForge displays the translated strings where available and defaults back to English for any missing phrases.