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Is there a Mac app for viewing all the characters of a font?

Font book doesn't seem have this feature.

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3 Answers

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Font Book does in fact have a view that displays all glyphs provided by a font — just select Preview - Repertoire on the menu bar:

enter image description here

You can also get a preview of a font using Quick Look: select a font file (from /Library/Fonts) and press space.

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ace ! cheers Graeme... – daniel Crabbe Dec 20 '11 at 16:05
@NathanGreenstein thanks for the image edit. – Graeme Hutchison Dec 20 '11 at 22:39
Not mine, thank @Lri :) – Nathan Greenstein♦ Dec 20 '11 at 22:52
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I guess you're on Lion - right ?

Because in Snow-Leopard you could get that by showing the "character viewer" from the inputs menu or launching directly /System/Library/Input Methods/CharacterPalette.app as described here and choosing "Glyph" view.

character viewer

glyph view

Check out the new smilies (now part of the Unicode standard ;) in the DejaVu font

But if you still got access to a Snow-Leopard installation you can copy the CharacterPalette.app from /System/Library/Input Methods/CharacterPalette.app and it will run on Lion, I would not recommend replacing the Lion version, but rather keeping the Snow-Leopard CharacterPalette as separate app - why did Apple have to make it worse in the first place ?!

As you can drag & drop glyphs from the Snow-Leopard Character Palette but not from the new Lion Font Book...

This idea was inspired by Is it possible to use the character map as a standalone app?

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Unfortunately, Apple broke this dialog in Lion like you said … it’s almost completely useless now. – Konrad Rudolph Jul 28 '12 at 15:35
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Alternatively in System Preferences -> International in the Input Menu tab there is an option to place a Character Palette on the menu bar that can (among other things) show you all the glyphs in a particular font, what the glyph is called and allow you to insert the character into a document or text field.

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In 10.7 Lion what you suggest is no longer possible in Character Viewer. – Tom Gewecke Dec 20 '11 at 18:10
Which annoyed my so much (!) that I copied the SnowLeopard "Character Viewer" from /System/Library/Input Methods/CharacterPalette.app to my new Lion installation (not as replacement, but as separate standalone app) - and guess what: it works ! I was so happy :D - The idea was inspired by apple.stackexchange.com/questions/20165/… – iolsmit Dec 21 '11 at 23:40
Well, crap -- I like the Character Viewer. Thanks for the update. – David Rouse Dec 22 '11 at 12:39

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