Embedded Fonts
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Using your own font with embedded-font.com

The Font tool's Font Family picker currently selects from a library of fonts bundled with the site (JetBrains Mono, Inconsolata, Space Mono, Share Tech Mono, VT323, Press Start 2P, Nunito, Poppins, Rajdhani, Oswald, Orbitron, Poetsen One, Sriracha, Rye, and others) — there is no upload button for your own .ttf/.otf file yet. This page covers what to check on your own font's license today, and what's planned.

What licenses allow this?

Generating a header "embeds" rasterized pixel data derived from a font, plus the font's license text as a comment in the output. Whether that's allowed depends entirely on the font's license:

  • SIL Open Font License (OFL) — yes. The OFL explicitly permits embedding and redistributing derived bitmap data, for personal and commercial use, as long as the license text travels with the derived work. This is why every font bundled with embedded-font.com is OFL-licensed, and why every generated header includes an OFL attribution comment.
  • Apache License 2.0 — yes, for the same reason: it permits modification and redistribution (including as compiled/derived data) with attribution.
  • Public domain / CC0 — yes, no restrictions.
  • Most commercial/proprietary desktop fonts — usually no. Typical commercial EULAs license the font file for specific uses (e.g. "documents" or "desktop applications") and explicitly prohibit extracting, converting, or embedding the outline/bitmap data in another product. Rasterizing such a font into a C header and shipping it in firmware would likely violate the EULA even though the output is "just pixels" — check your specific license.

How to check your font's license

  • Look for a license file next to the font — OFL.txt means SIL Open Font License; LICENSE or LICENSE.txt may contain Apache 2.0, MIT, or a custom EULA.
  • Check the font's metadata (most font tools show "Name Table" entries 0, 13, and 14 — Copyright, License Description, and License URL).
  • If you downloaded the font from Google Fonts or a similar OFL-focused catalog, it's very likely OFL — but verify per-family, since not every family on every catalog uses the same license.
  • When in doubt, treat the font as restricted and either use an OFL/Apache/public-domain alternative or get written permission from the font's author.

Using the bundled library today

Every font in the Font tool's Font Family picker is already cleared for this use — OFL-licensed, with the license text included as a comment in every header you download (see FONT LICENSE on the home page). Custom .ttf/.otf upload is a planned feature; until it ships, the bundled library covers a broad range of monospace and display styles suitable for embedded displays.

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