Thank you, I gave advice and missed this change.
I've created issue "Local font name makes web accessible", and I hope it would be fixed.
https://github.com/google/fonts/issues/2855
In Self-host your fonts for better performancegoogle
fonts
HTML2015–2025
google / fonts
fonts
Font files available from Google Fonts, and a public issue tracker for all things Google Fonts
35Distinct people
44Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
20.8KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Font files available from Google Fonts, and a public issue tracker for all things Google Fonts
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 6:01:32 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year44 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2015-03-09 17:29:15 UTC to 2025-09-15 18:17:36 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 6 | 0 | 6 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 2 | 1 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 2 | 2 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 12 | 0 | 12 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 5 | 1 | 4 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
From the project README
An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.
Read the project’s introduction
Google Fonts Files
This project mainly contains the binary font files served by Google Fonts (fonts.google.com)
The top-level directories indicate the license of all files found within them.
Subdirectories are named according to the family name of the fonts within.
Each family subdirectory contains the .ttf font files served by Google Fonts, plus a METADATA.pb file with metadata for the family (such as information on the project designer(s), genre category, and license - learn more) and a DESCRIPTION.en_us.html with a description of the family in US English.
The /catalog subdirectory contains additional metadata, such as profile texts and portrait/avatar images of font designers, and this is open for contributions and corrections from anyone via GitHub.
The /axisregistry subtree contains metadata for the GF Axis Registry, containing information on variable font axes that can be found in the collection, including experimental axes.
As a subtree, no changes should be made directly to this repo, instead please use the upstream, github.com/googlefonts/axisregistry
The /lang subtree contains language support data, and should also not be changed here but instead upstream.
github.com/googlefonts/lang
Bug Reports and Improvement Requests
If you find a problem with a font file or have a request for the future development of a font project, please create a new issue in this project's issue tracker.
Contribute Fonts
If you need more context on how to create issues in a GitHub issue tracker, or if you want to contribute a font directly, see CONTRIBUTING
Contributor Code of Conduct
However you choose to contribute, please abide by our code of conduct to keep our community a healthy and welcoming place.
Self Host Fonts Available From Google Fonts
Since all the fonts available here are licensed with permission to redistribute, subject to the license terms, you can self-host using a variety of third-party projects.
One popular service is Fontsource, which offers bundled NPM packages.
Local installation package managers
For Linux, macOS, FreeBSD, or HaikuOS you can also use fnt, to install single fonts. For RPM, DEB based systems, feel free to try the linked URLs for individual fonts. Others can also use the webservice.
Download All Google Fonts
You can download all Google Fonts in a simple ZIP snapshot (over 1GB) from https://github.com/google/fonts/archive/main.zip
Sync With Git
You can also sync the collection with git so that you can update by only fetching what has changed. To learn how to use git, GitHub provides illustrated guides, a youtube channel, and an interactive learning site.
Free, open-source git applications are available for Windows and Mac OS X.
License
It is important to always read the license for every font that you use.
Each font family directory contains the appropriate license file for the fonts in that directory.
The fonts files themselves also contain licensing and authorship metadata.
Most of the fonts in the collection use the SIL Open Font License, v1.1.
Some fonts use the Apache 2 license.
The Ubuntu fonts use the Ubuntu Font License v1.0.
The SIL Open Font License has an option for copyright holders to include a Reserved Font Name requirement, and this option is used with some of the fonts.
If you modify those fonts, please take care of this important detail.
Source Files
Source files for each family are often available from the designer, or from github.com/googlefonts
These fonts are usually the result of collaborative projects, where you are invited to discuss issues with the designers and even contribute to their ongoing development.
When customizing or remixing fonts, please do contact the designers to understand what they might need in order to include your improvements.
Most of all: Enjoy the fonts!
– The Google Fonts team
Read the full README on GitHubWhat Hacker News says
12 sourcesUnfortunately
> If the local() function is provided, specifying a font name to look for on the user's computer, and the user agent finds a match, that local font is used. Otherwise, the font resource specified using the url() function is downloaded and used.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@font-face
And this is not the case for Google Fonts anymore, for example
https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Noto%20Sans
I've created issue
https://github.com/google/fonts/issues/2855
----
>> Any correctly-coded website will try a local source first, which should help a lot for poor connections.
> Then Google Fonts is not correctly coded, as it'll use remote font only. And myriads of websites reusing Google Fonts snippets. To try local source first, you have to explicitly ask for it in @font-face/src which Google Fonts does not do
Read the rest
.
> So installing font into your OS won't help you with any website using Google Fonts service.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25301830
Wow! That used to not be the case. I can't find anything about the change but it used to include a check for local(font-face) in the sources.
Some random references to it w/ the snippets:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/52413970
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/18303215/how-can-i-preve...
https://github.com/google/fonts/issues/2620
In Self-host your fonts for better performanceThere are so many solutions!
* In uBlock Origin (which is a must have on bad internet): Settings > Block remote fonts
* In browser, Firefox about:config, gfx.downloadable_fonts.enabled, Chrome run with --disable-remote-fonts
* Download fonts when on good connection
> You can download all Google Fonts in a simple ZIP snapshot (over 300MB)
> https://github.com/google/fonts
installation depends on OS, on Arch Linux it would be
$ yay -S ttf-google-fonts-git
basically it puts font file under /usr/share/fonts/
Google recommends
> using a fonts manager (such as SkyFonts) that automatically syncs the latest versions of fonts from the Google Fonts API to your computer.
https://developers.google.com/fonts/faq
------
I browse with JS disabled by default in uMatrix, turn it off on problematic websites (maybe ten times a day). It would revert bac
Read the rest
k to disabled on next browser reload. And I have maybe 20 hosts enabled by default which I use often enough.
I don’t know if Google Fonts has changed its policies, but historically it pretty much just hasn’t updated its fonts. Even when repeatedly asked to by the original font’s author. Take as an example Crimson from https://github.com/skosch/Crimson: Google took Crimson Text in 2010 and put it onto Google Fonts, but mangled it in the process, messing up its line-height badly so that the regular and bold weights didn’t match, and that text using the web font would not line up with text using the original font. In 2012, the upstream font made various improvements, and the author attempted upon multiple occasions then and since to get Google Fonts to update the font (or even just to fix the bugs they introduced, for starters!). Others also tried. Well, it’s still broken. In the end a new version of the font (with variable weight) was commissioned
Read the rest
in 2018, and Crimson Pro now is. Allegedly the problems in Crimson Text were supposed to be fixed up after Crimson Pro was released: https://github.com/google/fonts/issues/2395#issuecomment-631....
I am aware of them updating fonts that they commissioned. But I know of multiple cases where Google Fonts has been serving versions of fonts that are five or more years out of date, sometimes even broken by Google Fonts. Crimson Text I can kinda understand them not fixing completely, because fixing it would have changed character positioning (thus breaking people’s careful alignment to work around the Google-Fonts-introduced bugs). But there have been other cases where that didn’t apply: metrics were the same, but they just wouldn’t update the font. Might have been PT Serif? Lato? I can’t remember, it’s years since I last cared about Google Fonts.
In short: updating the fonts is not all it’s cracked up to be; Google mostly just doesn’t, and half the time you actually wouldn’t want the font updates anyway—depends on the nature of the update.
They've always all been open, and you've always been able to get them. https://github.com/google/fonts
In The Fastest Google Fonts> maybe your first thought should be that there's something wrong with your setup
It is, but I tested in new, clean profile and it's the same. No error in Network or Console either.
It looks like to me the font this page uses ("rubik") are just showing as blank despite being a network resource.
I'm no webdev so this is the best I can do.
Edit: I think this font is just broken on Win 7: https://github.com/google/fonts/issues/1137, at least the version hosted on Adobe Fonts which this webpage is using.
In Founders on SaaS Platforms They UseWe ran into a rather large issue using Google Font CDN a few years ago. We were using Rubik font and pages were font was render as blank in certain browser combination.
They had to rollback, but there were a lot of escalations.
You can see the issue here.
https://github.com/google/fonts/issues/1137
Self-hosting fixed the problem. We no longer use Google Font CDN.
In Should you self-host Google Fonts?We’re basically forced to switch to self hosting due to the bizarre way Google implements statistics for Google Fonts. 1 out of 1000 requests will include a “tracking font” which is actually invalid and breaks document.fonts.load. This was an incredibly frustrating bug to track down.
Bug for those interested: https://github.com/google/fonts/issues/2345
In Should you self-host Google Fonts?The way google tracks fonts is so annoying. It took me furever to track down this bug: https://github.com/google/fonts/issues/2345
Basically, one out of a thousand requests delivers a broken font that breaks document.fonts.load().
In Google Fonts AnalyticsAny estimate when Inter can be expected?
https://github.com/google/fonts/issues/1455#event-2995287982
In Google Fonts AnalyticsWith some extra metadata, about 428MB.
https://github.com/google/fonts
Since the browser hands font rendering off to the operating system, however, the most pertinent browser-specific adjustment would be updating the (configurable) defaults (Serif, Sans-serif, etc...) for each supported platform - Georgia instead of Times for a default, for example.
In Google Fonts Analytics