FreeType Downloads

Stable Releases

Stable releases of the FreeType packages, including source code, documentation, demo programs, and support tools can be downloaded directly from

or from

Both sites have mirrors worldwide.

Windows DLLs of FreeType can also be downloaded directly from a github repository (version 2.10.4, built with VS Express 2017). Older DLLs compiled with MinGW are available from download page (version 2.3.5) of the GnuWin32 project, or from the GTK+ for Windows download page (version 2.4.10).

The latest Freetype 1 release, today mainly of historical interest only, can be downloaded here. Other projects related to FreeType are only available as CVS source code modules; see the developer page for more details.

Development Versions

The gitlab instance of freedesktop.org provides snapshots of both the freetype.git and freetype-demos.git repositories.

Downloading and compiling a development snapshot (or using the git repositories directly) is one of the first things to do when you encounter something that looks like a bug in FreeType. Note that we do not guarantee that all development snapshots work on a given day, though such glitches should happen very rarely.

For more details on compilation from git, please read the file README.git, located in FreeType's top directory.

Support Tools and Binaries

GNU Make for Win32

GNU Make is required to use the FreeType build system from a command line prompt.

Note that the binary comes from the excellent MinGW distribution, which we highly recommend over Cygwin, if you don't need POSIX-compliance, in terms of ease of use and performance.

After installation you should check that it is correctly invoked by typing:

make -v

The first lines should read:

GNU Make 3.81
Copyright (C) 2006  Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.
There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Newer versions work also, of course.

Project Files

The FreeType source code bundle contains project files for various versions of Microsoft Visual C++ and Visual Studio for x64, Windows 32, and Windows CE. However, these files have been contributed and might be out of date, thus use them with care.

For classic MacOS, support files for MPW and CodeWarrior are provided.