How to Clear Hints in FontForge

Font hinting aligns vector outlines to a pixel grid to ensure text renders crisply at small sizes, but corrupted, conflicting, or outdated hints often cause severe visual distortion and uneven stroke weights. This guide provides step-by-step instructions for completely removing both PostScript hints and TrueType instructions from individual glyphs or entire fonts using FontForge, allowing you to resolve rendering glitches or rebuild clean hinting profiles from scratch.

Clearing Hints from a Single Glyph

If the distortion is isolated to specific characters, you can manually strip the hints directly inside the Glyph View window.

  1. Double-click the affected glyph in the main Font View window to open it in the Glyph View.
  2. Click the Hints menu from the top navigation bar.
  3. Select Clear Hints to remove both horizontal and vertical PostScript stem hints.
  4. If working with a TrueType font (.ttf), select Hints > Clear TTF Instructions to remove low-level bytecode that controls grid-fitting.
  5. If hint masks are causing overlapping errors, click Hints > Clear Hint Masks.

The blue and green reference bars along the edges of the canvas will disappear, confirming the hint coordinates have been cleared.

Clearing Hints Across the Entire Font

When distortion occurs across multiple glyphs, clearing hints globally ensures uniform rendering across the whole font.

  1. In the main Font View window, select all characters by pressing Ctrl + A (or Cmd + A on macOS), or choose Edit > Select > Select All.
  2. Open the Hints menu in the top menu bar.
  3. Click Clear Hints. FontForge will process the selection and remove all PostScript hints across every highlighted glyph.
  4. If your project contains TrueType instructions, open the Hints menu again and select Clear TTF Instructions.

Preventing FontForge from Automatically Re-hinting

FontForge is set by default to automatically regenerate hints whenever glyphs are modified or saved. If your outlines are already distorted, autohinting can re-apply the exact instructions that caused the rendering issue.

  1. Go to the Hints menu.
  2. Check whether AutoHint is toggled on (indicated by a checkmark).
  3. Click AutoHint to uncheck it. This stops FontForge from recalculating hints during editing sessions.

Exporting an Unhinted Font

To ensure no legacy hint data carries over into your final binary file:

  1. Click File > Generate Fonts...
  2. Choose your desired output format (such as OpenType CFF or TrueType).
  3. Click the Options button in the file dialog.
  4. Uncheck PS Hints and PS Flex if generating PostScript-based formats (.otf).
  5. Uncheck TrueType Hints if generating TrueType formats (.ttf).
  6. Click OK, then click Generate to save the clean font file.