# Fontcrafter

Hacker Approved page: https://hackerapproved.com/p/fontcrafter/

15 people recommended Fontcrafter in Hacker News comments, 2 had mixed feelings and 7 criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026. It was recommended in 1 of 12 months, in 1 thread. It does not meet the Hacker Approved badge rule.

15 of the 15 people who recommend it commented in one thread, “Fontcrafter: Turn Your Handwriting into a Real Font”.

**Verdict:** Recommended as a clever browser tool that turns handwriting into a usable font, often with surprising accuracy. Main caveat: it does not support cursive and can fail on scans.

Summary written by Claude from 23 comments. It was written before the November 2026 recount, and 22 of those comments still count.

## Why people recommend it

- Cool idea, good concept (4 comments in the sample): "This is cool, but my handwriting is illegible so only a handful of people would be able to read it. Love the idea, though." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47312180)) "Great to see some competition on the market" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47307395)) "I don’t see the downside here." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47307927))
- Works well after fixes (3 comments in the sample): "Worked good for me scanning with the Google drive app and "enhancing" the scan." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47311914)) "Same template should work (with current fixes in place" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47318170)) "seems to be working well now" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47327269))
- Accurate, impressive results (2 comments in the sample): "this is actually quite good. wasn't expecting it to be that accurate." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47314286)) "It's really impressive for what it is." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47313520))

## What people warn about

- Scan errors break or distort letters (4 comments in the sample): "it kind of fell to pieces down the page suggesting that the registration isn't good enough to detect each block" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47309792)) "something about the way the app applied the threshold on the scanned image, made the letters really broken" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47309396)) "it failed at the first hurdle, which is scanning the glyphs correctly" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47307973))
- Does not support cursive (1 comment in the sample): "it doesn't seem to support cursive, which is how I and most people I know write" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47307223))

## The badge

A product earns the Hacker Approved badge when at least 10 people recommend it, recommenders outnumber critics at least 2 to 1 (mixed feelings count toward neither side), it was recommended in at least 4 of the 12 months and in at least 5 different threads, and no single thread supplies more than half of the people who recommend it. Health and money products are never badged.

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Fontcrafter", https://hackerapproved.com/p/fontcrafter/ (15 recommend, 2 mixed, 7 criticize; Hacker News comments, November 2025 to October 2026).

Counts updated 2 Nov 2026, with data through October 31, 2026.