X-Fonter 14.0

Browse & Find Fonts

The Browse tab lets you locate and preview fonts that are not yet installed on your system. You can point X-Fonter at any folder — on a local hard drive, a USB stick, a CD/DVD, or a network share — and it will scan for all TrueType (.ttf), OpenType (.otf) and PostScript Type 1 (.pfb/.pfm) font files and display them ready to preview.

Because fonts are only read during browsing, nothing is changed on your system until you explicitly choose to install or load a font.

The Browse tab showing the folder tree on the left and the found font list on the right — The Browse tab. Left: folder tree. Right: font files found in the selected folder.

Navigating to a Folder

Use the folder tree on the left side of the Browse tab to navigate to the location that contains your fonts. Click any folder to select it — X-Fonter immediately begins scanning that folder for font files. The results appear in the list on the right as they are found, so you do not have to wait for the scan to finish before you start previewing.

All drives visible in Windows Explorer are available here, including mapped network drives and removable media. If you insert a disc or plug in a USB drive after X-Fonter is already open, click the Refresh button to update the drive list.

Toolbar Buttons

Button	What it does
Favorites	Opens a menu of your saved folders so you can jump to a frequently used location in one click. The same menu lets you add the current folder to your favorites or open the Favorite Folders manager to rename or reorganise them.
Include Subfolders	When enabled, X-Fonter searches the selected folder and all folders inside it recursively. Use this to scan an entire drive or a deeply nested font library in a single pass. The button highlights when the option is active.
Refresh	Re-reads the current folder. Use this after adding or deleting font files outside of X-Fonter, or after connecting new removable media, to make sure the list is up to date.
Cancel Search	Stops a scan that is in progress. Useful when searching a large folder tree and you have already found what you need — the fonts discovered so far remain in the list.

The Font Results List

Each row in the results list represents one font file and shows:

Font name — the internal name stored in the font file (not necessarily the filename)
File name — the actual file on disk
Type — TrueType, OpenType, or PostScript Type 1
File size
Folder path — particularly useful when searching with subfolders enabled

Click a font in the list to select it. The Font Detail panel at the bottom of the screen updates immediately to show a preview of the selected font at various sizes, along with its full character set and metadata.

Double-clicking a font opens it in the Font View window, where you can type your own sample text and compare it side-by-side with other fonts.

Tip: You can select multiple fonts at once using Shift+Click (range) or Ctrl+Click (individual). Right-clicking the selection shows a context menu with options to load, install, copy, or add the fonts to a Collection.

Loading a Font Temporarily

If you want to try a font in another application without permanently installing it, use Load. A loaded font becomes available to all running Windows applications for the current session only — it is unloaded automatically when X-Fonter closes or when you unload it manually.

To load one or more fonts from the Browse tab:

Select the font(s) in the results list.
Right-click and choose Load Font(s), or click the Load button in the toolbar.
Switch to your design application — the font will appear in its font menu.

See Installing & Loading Fonts for full details, including how to load an entire folder at once.

Using Favorites for Quick Access

If you regularly browse the same folders — for example, a project folder, a client archive, or a font library on a network share — add them to your Favorites so you do not have to navigate the folder tree each time.

Navigate to the folder in the folder tree.
Click the Favorites button.
Choose Add Current Folder to Favorites.

From then on, that folder appears at the top of the Favorites menu. See Favorite Folders for more on organising and renaming your favorites.

Common Scenarios

Scanning an entire hard drive for fonts

Select the drive root (for example C:\) in the folder tree, enable Include Subfolders, then wait for the scan to complete. Results will include every TrueType, OpenType and PostScript font on the drive. On a drive with thousands of fonts this can take a minute or two — use Cancel Search as soon as you have found what you need.

Browsing a font CD or USB drive

Insert the disc or plug in the drive. Click Refresh to make it appear in the folder tree, then navigate to it as you would any local folder. You can preview and load fonts directly from the removable media without copying them to your hard drive first.

Finding fonts in a deeply nested project folder

Navigate to the top-level project folder, enable Include Subfolders, and let X-Fonter scan the entire tree. Every font file found — regardless of how many levels deep — will appear in the flat results list, making it easy to compare them all at once.

Tip: Use Font Filtering to narrow down a large results list by font type, name, or other criteria after the scan is complete.