Show HN: Google Fonts Checker

#1

Post by dcooper » Fri, Dec 02, 2022, 1:37 PM UTC

I built a free tool you can use to check if a website is using Google Fonts. It tests the website using headless Chrome (Puppeteer), so all methods of font loading are captured, not just hardcoded references.

Show HN: Google Fonts Checker
fontsplugin.com

Re: Show HN: Google Fonts Checker

#2

Post by brataaaaan » Fri, Dec 02, 2022, 2:15 PM UTC

Great tool.

This is especially important to be GDPR-compliant in Europe.

Re: Show HN: Google Fonts Checker

#3

Post by dcooper » Fri, Dec 02, 2022, 2:17 PM UTC

brataaaaan wrote: post #2

Great tool. This is especially important to be GDPR-compliant in Europe.

Thanks! Yes - I built it because I was getting a huge influx of support requests from users with websites in the EU (Germany more specifically), concerned with Google Fonts.

Re: Show HN: Google Fonts Checker

#4

Post by bcopa » Fri, Dec 02, 2022, 2:29 PM UTC

WhatFont plug in is also a great tool for this!

Re: Show HN: Google Fonts Checker

#5

Post by Tepix » Fri, Dec 02, 2022, 2:33 PM UTC

This is nice.

Hosting fonts locally is something i've advocated since the beginnings of Google Fonts.

Apart from the stated benefits it also means fewer DNS lookups i.e. yet another point of failure gone and yet another privacy bonus. It's not just google that can spy on you, also your ISP.

PS: It's not just Google Fonts, this applies to all fonts stored on CDNs.

Re: Show HN: Google Fonts Checker

#6

Post by dcooper » Fri, Dec 02, 2022, 2:33 PM UTC

bcopa wrote: post #4

WhatFont plug in is also a great tool for this!

Does it show where the font is hosted, ie locally-hosted vs fonts.googleapis.com?

Re: Show HN: Google Fonts Checker

#7

Post by huhtenberg » Fri, Dec 02, 2022, 2:39 PM UTC

> The first reason is user-privacy.

And yet the site itself embeds googletagmanager.com and cloudflareinsights.com assets. Oh, the irony.

Re: Show HN: Google Fonts Checker

#8

Post by ahelwer » Fri, Dec 02, 2022, 2:40 PM UTC

If you're hosting your website with a static site generator on github/gitlab/sourcehut etc., check the documentation for whatever theme you're using. I'm using the Beautiful Hugo theme and switching to self-hosted fonts (and javascript) was as easy as adding

  [Params]
    selfHosted = true

in the top-level config.toml.

Re: Show HN: Google Fonts Checker

#9

Post by angrygoat » Fri, Dec 02, 2022, 2:41 PM UTC

Thanks for this tool.

One piece of feedback – it's not great that the `test_id` is a small sequentially generated integer; it's trivial to iterate across all of the URLs that have been tested.

Re: Show HN: Google Fonts Checker

#10

Post by leeoniya » Fri, Dec 02, 2022, 2:43 PM UTC

as a big fan of self-hosting all the things, without CDNs (except vids or hi res galleries), i've been a regular user of google-webfonts-helper:

https://gwfh.mranftl.com/fonts