The Font Overview includes a Search Glyphs panel for creating search queries and finding glyphs in a font. It can toggled using the Views buttons in the Font Overview window, or using the keyboard shortcut ⌘ + F.

Search expressions

A search query is made out of one or more search expressions, combined with a boolean operator. Search expressions may use different types of glyph attributes and conditions.

Use the + button on the right side of the panel to add a new search expression to the query, and the - button to remove an expression.

Glyph attributes

Search expressions use the same glyph attributes as the Font Overview’s List Mode.

attribute description type
Name Glyph name. str
Width Glyph width. int or float
Left sidebearing Glyph left sidebearing. int or float
Right sidebearing Glyph right sidebearing. int or float
Unicode Glyph unicode. hex
Contours Number of contours in the glyph. int
Components Number of components in the glyph. int
Anchors Number of anchors in the glyph. int
Components names A comma-separated list of the base glyph names of all components in the glyph. list
Anchor names A comma-separated list of all anchor names in the glyph. list
Note Glyph note. str
Empty A bool indicating if the glyph is empty. bool
Glyph changed A bool indicating if the glyph has been changed since the last saved version. bool
Template A bool indicating if the glyph is a template glyph. bool
Skip Export A bool indicating if the glyph should not be included in generated fonts. bool
Mark Color The mark color of the glyph. tuple

Conditions

Each type of attribute offers a different set of filtering conditions.

type conditions
str is, is not, contains, begins with, ends with, matches
int or float is, is not, is less than, is greater than
list is not, contains
bool is, is not
tuple is, is not, contains, matches

Boolean operators

Search expressions can be combined using boolean operators.

options operator result
All AND Show glyphs which match all queries.
Any OR Show glyphs which match at least one query.
None NOT Show glyphs which don’t match any query.

Regular expressions

The matches condition (available for glyph names and mark colors) supports regular expressions. Regex is useful for creating smarter, more compact search expressions.

Examples:

[a-z]
Lists all lowercase glyphs.
[A-Z]
Lists all uppercase glyphs.
[A-z]
Lists all 52 uppercase and lowercase glyphs.
[a-z](caron|cedilla|ogonek|commaaccent|grave|acute|dieresis)
Lists all lowercase glyphs containing these accents.
[A-Z]*
Lists all glyphs with a named made entirely of uppercase letters (A, B, C, AE, IJ…)
.*fina
Lists all glyphs ending with “fina”.
_.*
Lists all glyphs that start with “_” (not exporting glyphs).
[^_]+.+
Lists all glyphs that don’t start with “_”.
[^_]+_.+
Lists all glyphs with “_” in the middle.

Saving Search Queries as Smart Sets

Search queries can be saved as Query-based or List-based Smart Sets using the two buttons at the top of the Search Glyphs bar.

option description
Selection to Set

Save the selected glyphs as a List-based Smart Set.

List-based Smart Sets display glyphs based on a static list of glyph names.

Save Set

Save the current query as a Query-based Smart Set.

Query-based Smart Sets search the font dynamically, so the result is updated based on changes in the font.

Last edited on 01/09/2021