How to Make a Handwriting Font on Your Phone and Export TTF

1. Decide what your handwriting font needs to contain

Handwriting Font Maker captures the strokes you draw on the screen and converts them into outlines in a TrueType font. The result is a TTF containing characters you can type, rather than a picture of written text.

It is not designed to include every Japanese character. The 180-character limit counts both selected characters and drawings retained after a character is removed from the selection. A short phrase, title or fixed set of characters is a more manageable target.

The app does not turn photographs or scanned handwriting into a font. Each character must be drawn directly in the browser.

2. Enter a font name and choose your characters

Open the tool and enter a font name. Then choose from hiragana, katakana, uppercase and lowercase Latin letters, digits and symbols.

If you have a specific sentence in mind, enter it in the custom-text field. The app extracts the characters used in that text, avoiding the need to draw unrelated characters. Drawings remain in the project when you remove their characters from the active selection, and you can resume them after selecting those characters again.

The 180-character limit includes active characters and stored drawings outside the current selection. A change that would exceed that combined limit is stopped without deleting your existing work.

3. Draw each character and correct strokes

Press Start writing to draw each selected character. On a phone or tablet, use a finger or compatible pen; on a computer, use a mouse. The faint guide character can be turned on or off.

Adjust the pen width and draw the strokes. If you make a mistake, use stroke-level Undo or Redo. The app retains the pen coordinates as vectors instead of rasterizing the handwriting and tracing the image again.

Complicated overlapping strokes may not produce the exact outlines you expect. Check the rendered TTF before exporting it.

4. Find unfinished or review-needed characters

Use the previous and next controls or the character list to move through your set. The list can show All, Unfinished or Review, making it easier to return to missing or flagged characters.

The progress bar counts completed characters across the whole project. Filtering the list does not change the selection, character order or completion count.

At the last character, the main action takes you back to unfinished work if any remains. Once all selected characters have been drawn, it leads to Review & save.

5. Inspect the generated font at four text sizes

The preview reloads the generated TTF and renders its glyphs at 12, 16, 24 and 48px. A character that looks clear when enlarged can have strokes that merge or disappear at smaller sizes.

Review flags focus on glyph details that merge or disappear at 16px or 24px compared with 48px. The 12px display is for reference, and a problem seen only there does not count toward Review. Check the shapes yourself even when the status reads OK.

Return to any affected character through the Review filter and redraw it if needed. The status is a prompt to inspect the font, not an automatic correction.

6. Review changes and retry a failed preview

If a character looks wrong, return to the drawing screen and adjust its strokes. Any edit invalidates the previously generated TTF, preventing you from downloading an outdated version as the current font.

If font generation or preview fails, select Retry font preview beside the status. Size checks show Not checked while the preview is unavailable; those glyphs are not counted as Review warnings.

Your strokes remain available when you retry. You can still use Save editable project to back up your work even while TTF generation is failing. Retry is not automatic.

7. Save an editable .handfont.json project

The app autosaves your strokes and character selection in browser storage. That work may no longer be available after you clear browser data or move to a different browser.

Use Save editable project on the writing screen to download a .handfont.json file with an editable filename. It retains drawings for characters removed from the active set. To continue on another device, load the project from the character-selection screen.

TTF and .handfont.json contain different kinds of data. Keep an editable project file alongside the completed font if you expect to revise your lettering later.

8. Export the completed TrueType font

Once you have written your characters, go to Review & save. Check the filename and preview, then press Save TTF. Export is enabled only if at least one glyph has been drawn and the generated font for the current strokes, pen width and font name has loaded successfully.

The tool exports TrueType fonts in TTF format only. It does not directly export WOFF2 for websites, nor does it provide advanced spacing adjustments, kerning or ligatures.

Your device or application must support installing or loading TTF files to use the font elsewhere. Installation and import steps vary by operating system and app.

9. Limits, browser support and local processing

A project is limited to 180 characters, counting retained off-selection drawings, and a total of 80,000 stored points. Characters above Unicode U+FFFF are unsupported. Importing images or paper templates and randomly alternating different glyph shapes for one character are not features of this tool.

Current Chrome and Edge are the primary target browsers. Firefox, Safari and iOS Safari can behave differently because of Web API implementation differences. Touch drawing is supported, but identical results across every phone and browser are not guaranteed.

The app records strokes, generates the font, previews it and saves it locally. Handwriting is not uploaded, and the runtime content security policy blocks external connections with connect-src 'none'. Opening the page initially still involves downloading its HTML.

Tips and limitations

• If your text is already decided, enter it in the custom-character field before drawing. You'll then work with the characters needed for that text.
• A character can be clear at 48px but crowded at 16px. Review it at sizes close to where you expect to use the font.
• Save a .handfont.json backup if you plan to continue on another device rather than relying only on browser autosave.
• The export is TTF. For web use, you may need a separate conversion to WOFF2.