How to Identify a Font from a Screenshot
You've taken a screenshot of text you love, but you don't know what font it is. Unlike inspecting a live website, a screenshot requires visual matching tools that compare letterforms against font databases. Here's how to get the most accurate identification from a screenshot.
Prepare Your Screenshot for Best Results
Before uploading your screenshot to any font identification tool, crop it tightly so only the text is visible. Remove any surrounding graphics, icons, or images that could confuse the detection algorithm. If the text has a busy or low-contrast background, use an image editor to increase the contrast or convert it to black text on a white background. The text should be at least 50 pixels tall and preferably horizontal — rotated or curved text dramatically reduces accuracy. If your screenshot contains multiple fonts, crop separate images for each one and identify them individually.
Upload to WhatTheFont
Go to myfonts.com/WhatTheFont and either drag your cropped screenshot onto the page or click to upload it. The tool automatically detects text regions and isolates individual characters using AI recognition. Review the detected characters to make sure they're correct — you can manually adjust any misidentified letters. WhatTheFont then searches its database of over 130,000 fonts and returns a ranked list of matches. The top results are usually very accurate for common fonts, but for obscure or custom typefaces you may need to scroll through more suggestions or try a different tool.
Try WhatFontIs for More Results
If WhatTheFont didn't find a convincing match, try WhatFontIs at whatfontis.com. Its database is significantly larger at over 900,000 fonts, and it includes many free and independent fonts that MyFonts doesn't carry. Upload your screenshot, confirm the character detection, and optionally filter results to show only free fonts. WhatFontIs also lets you search by specifying that you already know certain characteristics — like whether the font is serif or sans-serif — to narrow the results. Running your screenshot through multiple tools increases your chances of finding an exact match.
Use Google Lens for Font Identification
Google Lens can identify fonts from screenshots, though it's less specialized than dedicated font tools. Open Google Lens (via the Google app, Google Photos, or lens.google.com), upload your screenshot, and select the text area. Google Lens uses OCR to read the text and sometimes suggests font matches or visually similar results through image search. While it won't give you the precise font name as reliably as WhatTheFont, it can be surprisingly effective for popular fonts and is useful as a quick secondary check. It also works directly from your phone's camera roll, making it convenient for identifying fonts you photograph in the real world.
When to Use a Browser Extension Instead
If the text in your screenshot comes from a live website that you can still visit, skip the image-based tools entirely and use a browser extension like Font Finder instead. Image-based identification is inherently a best-guess process that compares visual shapes, while Font Finder reads the actual CSS font properties directly from the browser — giving you a 100% accurate result every time. You'll also get additional details like font size, weight, color, and line height that no screenshot tool can provide. Save image-based identification for situations where you truly can't access the original source: printed materials, app interfaces, images shared on social media, or websites that are no longer online.
Try Font Finder Now
The fastest way to identify fonts on any website. Install the free Chrome extension and start inspecting typography in one click.