google-webfonts-helper
A web tool that lets you download Google Fonts as files and CSS so you can host them yourself.
- Stars
- 13.1k
- Forks
- 439
- Licence
- MIT
- Language
- TypeScript
- Last update
- 1 months ago
- Type
- App
What it is
google-webfonts-helper is a web service that makes it easier to self-host fonts from Google Fonts. You pick a font, choose the styles, character sets and file formats you need, and download the files (zipped) along with CSS snippets to use them. The README describes it as a way to host a Google font on your own server instead of loading it from Google.
- Download a font in woff and woff2 formats with only the latin subset
- Copy generated @font-face CSS into a website stylesheet
- Use the JSON API to fetch font files or a zip for a chosen font, subsets, formats and variants
Great for
- Web developers who want to serve Google Fonts from their own server
- Teams that prefer not to load third-party font files from Google
- People who need specific font formats such as woff2 or ttf for a project
Not ideal for
- Anyone who only needs a font for a quick prototype, since loading from Google's CDN is simpler (the README does not compare the two directly)
- People who need fonts that are not on Google Fonts
How to get it
- 1
Use it in the browser (or self-host)
Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/majodev/google-webfonts-helper - 2
Run it
- Open https://gwfh.mranftl.com in your browser
- Search for and select a Google font
- Choose the charsets, styles and file formats you need
- Download the zip and copy the CSS snippet into your project
- 3
Get the most out of it
- Use the JSON API download option with subsets, formats and variants parameters to narrow the zip contents
- Limit formats to woff2 and woff if you only need modern browser support, to keep the download small
- Use the generated CSS snippets rather than writing @font-face rules by hand
Downloads
Strengths
- Gives you font files and CSS snippets in one place
- Lets you limit downloads to the styles, subsets and formats you need
- Offers a JSON API for scripted access
Trade-offs
- Depends on the hosted service at gwfh.mranftl.com for the main workflow; the README notes it is kept alive by sponsorships
- The README is truncated, so details of self-hosting the tool itself are not fully visible here
Stats synced from GitHub. The assessment above was drafted with AI from the project's README on 2026-10-29 and may miss recent changes — check the README before relying on a command. MIT licence: free to use, modify and distribute, including commercially, as long as you keep the copyright notice.