[seahcb]

Hey, I'm part of the team that made this, and you have the wrong link. This is our new mobile app: http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/mobile/

It's powered by deep learning, and it's way better and more accurate than the current desktop version that's linked here.

[slig]

Why the mobile version is "way better and more accurate" when, I believe, most people wanting to know the name of a font are people working on a computer?

[detritus]

Absolutely - I've used 'WTF' quite a lot over the years, never once from a mobile, nor can I imagine ever doing so.

I'm certainly not going to start taking photos of my monitor here, anyway!

Odd.

[Aardwolf]

Normally I'm not the fan of unneeded mobile app dependence of things (e.g. home lighting). But in this case, taking photo of your computer monitor and getting font name as result seems more convenient than taking screenshot, cropping, uploading, etc...

[slig]

If you're on a Mac, try Command + Shift + 4 to take a screenshot with a crop tool that's saved on your ~/Desktop folder.

[indubitable]

The Windows equivalent (it sounds like) is Snipping Tool. Start -> Snip will show it. Or you can navigate to it under accessories. Extremely handy.

[nerfhammer]

try command + cntrl + shift + 4.

copies the image straight into the clipboard, no detritus to your desktop. many web apps will just accept the cmd +V paste like an uploaded file.

[segmondy]

What's wrong with taking photo of your monitor?

[detritus]

What's right, in this context?

[seahcb]

Because we rolled out the mobile update first.

[yborg]

And when will you be rolling out the desktop version?

[welcomebrand]

I just tried a couple of photos of websites from my monitor and it's really nowhere near close to identifying. One of them was roboto from the play store which I'd have hoped would be an easy one.

Does it struggle with photos of screens in particular?

[seahcb]

No, it does fine with screens. The problem you're encountering is that we don't have any Google Fonts in the MyFonts library currently. The app can only return fonts that we have on MyFonts.

[pc86]

Why not just say "we recognize this font but don't have the license/permission to tell you what it is?"

[on_and_off]

AFAIK Roboto has a very permissive licence, is this really a permission problem ?

[pault]

MyFonts is my go-to source for fonts when I'm doing design work, and I understand why WTF is limited to MyFonts' database, but I do think it kind of cripples it and it would be really cool if it could identify external fonts by name but suggest a similar font in the catalog. Thanks for the great service you provide!

[ghostly_s]

> The app can only return fonts that we have on MyFonts.

Oh, so it's actually a useless tool then. Thanks for the clarification.

[fractallyte]

Hey, that's not nice.

MyFonts is one of the best font sites I know of, with a huge selection of fonts and top designers. There are regular offers on new fonts, and informative interviews (great for discovering typefaces).

I find WTF very useful. Sure, it's not perfect, and I continue to hope for better accuracy and results. I'm glad to hear they're working on it.

[CharlesW]

> Hey, that's not nice.

"Useless" is a bit strong, but the comment emphasizes the tool's most important limitation.

I might've said "Since WhatTheFont doesn't include fonts typically used on web sites, this tool is radically more effective when identifying fonts used in printed materials."

I'd like to understand if the team considers this to be a problem that they plan to solve, or if WhatTheFont will only identify fonts that they can monetize. (No judgement either way.)

[artificial]

Are you using another device to capture the screen contents or directly dumping the screen to a file?

[rbanffy]

Is there an easy way I can add my font? It doesn't seem to know about it.

https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font

[zichy]

Is your font on MyFonts?

[rbanffy]

I don't think so. Would the open-source license be a problem?