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Show HN: GPU-font – match fonts with WebGPU

Developer dy released gpu-font, an open-source browser tool that identifies the closest font families to any line of text using WebGPU, published on Hacker News as a Show HN. The tool splits a crop into up to three grayscale windows of at most 128 × 48 px, scores every font per window with a small neural network trained in PyTorch on Google Fonts rendered by Pillow and Chromium, and averages the scores into a ranking. New fonts need no retraining — only a style vector — and the package is installable via `npm install gpu-font` for browser or Node use.

read4 min views1 publishedSep 28, 2026
Show HN: GPU-font – match fonts with WebGPU
Image: source

in browser

Finds the closest font families to any line of text.

Recognition is experimental.

Source #

Model #

Matches #

Catalog #

How it works #

The crop is split into up to three small grayscale windows. A small neural network scores every font for each window, and the scores are averaged into the ranking.

Trained in PyTorch on Google Fonts rendered by Pillow and Chromium; the repository has everything to reproduce it.

  • Model
  • –
  • Input
  • Up to 3 grayscale windows, at most 128 × 48 px
  • Catalog
  • –
  • Runs on
  • Starting…
  • First download
  • –
Top-1 by source text length
Characters Clean All views

|---|---|---|

Accuracy

  • 1st result
  • –
  • Top 5
  • –

– crops of 5–10 characters in every Google Fonts family, drawn by Chrome, on text it never trained on. Searched in Google Fonts.

  • 1st result
  • –
  • Top 5
  • –

– photos of a word printed or painted on walls and objects, from WhatFontIs-Bench. Searched in all catalogs.

  • 1st result
  • –
  • Top 5
  • –

– “What font is this?” posts on the DaFont forum with an answer the forum confirmed, cropped by hand. Searched in all catalogs.

Speed

  • WebGPU
  • –
  • CPU
  • –

Why did it miss my font?

The model is still improving. It learned from clean rendered text, so photos, blur, perspective, outlines and textures throw it off, as do one or two letters, mixed fonts and look-alike families. Or the catalogs lack the font.

Can it tell weight, italic or width?

Weight and italic, yes: each match names its closest face. Width only between families, such as Roboto and Roboto Condensed.

Can it find commercial fonts?

Only the ones you own. Commercial libraries’ terms mostly forbid collecting their fonts, so the catalogs hold openly licensed ones, and a commercial font gets its closest open look-alikes. Index your own collection to find the font itself.

Does it work beyond Latin?

Yes, less reliably. In the top 5: Latin –, Cyrillic –, Arabic –, Chinese –, measured on few non-Latin families so far. Fonts without the detected script’s subset are left out.

Does it support handwriting, icons, non-fonts?

Not yet. Real handwriting, lettering and logos get only loose matches, and icons and symbols aren’t indexed. Handwriting fonts match like any other font.

Do new fonts need retraining?

No. A new font needs only its style vector, and fonts it never saw match as well as fonts it trained on. Styles unlike the training data match less well.

Can I add my own fonts?

Yes: index them on Catalogs, then choose My fonts in the catalog menu. They stay in your browser.

Can I use it from code?

Yes, in the browser or Node: npm install gpu-font. The README shows the API.

Alternatives #

Matcher Fonts Your fonts Styles Subsets Runs on Open source Cost
WhatFontIs WhatFontIs Com SRL 1,200,000+Free and commercial, many vendors – – Latin Server No 5 a day freePaid PRO
WhatTheFont MyFonts 400,000+ MyFonts – – – ServerWeb and apps No Free
Font Finder Owner not stated 50,000+Web, system and commercial fonts – – – Windows appServer No Free
Photoshop Match Font Adobe 30,000+ Adobe Fonts Installed – Latin, Japanese Desktop app No Subscription
Lens Mixfont 5,000+Google Fonts and other open fonts – Weight, italic – Local Python, or hosted Non‑commercial Free non‑commercialPaid API
What the Google Font Serbyte Development 2,000+Google Fonts families – – – ServerWeb and Chrome extension No FreeUnlimited
| [Matcherator](https://www.fontsquirrel.com/matcherator) Font Squirrel | Not stated [Font Squirrel, Fontspring, MyFonts](https://www.fontsquirrel.com/faq) | – | – | – | Server | No | Free | 
| [gpu-font](https://github.com/dy/gpu-font) dy | –Google Fonts, DaFont and more | [Installed, folders](./catalogs.html#my-fonts) | Weight, italic | – | BrowserWebGPU or CPU | MIT | Free | 

Licenses #

No font files ship here: previews load from Google Fonts under each family’s license, or are small black-and-white pictures of each font, stored with the site or, for DaFont, loaded from its site, and the catalogs hold only names, links and style numbers.

A match is not a license: check a font’s terms with its foundry. Font names are their owners’ trademarks; gpu-font isn’t affiliated with them.

The code is MIT-licensed and comes without warranty.

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