In search of the best free font manager for Windows, we tried out several programs. Here are the results we found:
- Fast Font Preview: just a font viewer, you can preview fonts in a folder before installing them. Can change custom preview text. Very simple.
- Cfont Pro: Takes too long to load. Too complex, can uninstall/backup, can’t compare or custom text preview.
- FontHit Font Tools: couldn’t uninstall fonts properly, gave an error. Can easily preview fonts and change custom preview text. Can preview fonts in a folder before installing them. Looks good (but slightly dated). Shows already installed fonts when browsing a new font folder.
- FontFrenzy: functional but limited. UX needs getting used to cuz not intuitive. Fast. Can easily preview fonts and change custom preview text. Can preview fonts in a folder before installing them. Looks ok.
- NexusFont: can’t see uninstalled fonts, you have to manually copy them and open them in folder to reinstall them. Can easily change custom preview text. Can’t preview uninstalled fonts before installing them. Looks great though. Shows font file size. Can group fonts.
Verdict: They all suck in different ways. There’s no perfect one.
Best one for previewing already installed fonts is NexusFont because the font previews are well spaced apart.
Best one for previewing uninstalled fonts is FontHit Font Tools because it also tells you which fonts are already installed.
Closest thing to a complete font manager is FontFrenzy but I’m not going to call it the best because it’s not intuitive to use and it’s missing what the other 2 font managers mentioned above provide. Now that you know, you can pick what works best for you.
You can always use several ones in combination. Or you can just use a font previewer to just preview which fonts you need or want to install, and then just manually install or delete your fonts. Keep a backup folder with all uninstalled fonts.
All these programs can be found and downloaded from download.com
