Thanks to a tip from a follower on Twitter, appreciate it @khsouh, I have discovered what appears to be a new app for creating your own personalized handwriting based TrueType font. According to the Microsoft Store listing, the app was released back in March of this year but I have not seen anything in the normal channels about its availability.

So it is at least new to me and hopefully for many of you as well.

The Microsoft Font Maker app in the Microsoft Store on Windows 10 uses your compatible inking pen hardware/screen to walk you through creation of this uniquely personalized font.

Once you have installed the app you are presented with three screens to provide samples of your writing however, before you can get started you are asked if you will share your handwriting samples anonymously to help Microsoft improve your own inking experience. Your choice on this screen does not impact your ability to create your personalized handwriting font.

As you will see in the gallery below, the first screen asks you to write a series of letters and symbols. These include upper and lower case letters, the numbers 0 to 9, punctuation and other symbols.

Once that is done you will then be asked to write three sentences on the next screen.

The last step is to adjust the spacing between characters, words, and the size of your handwriting font. Finally you will be prompted to give your unique handwriting font a name and save it to your computer.

Now you have a TrueType font that is ready to be installed on your system so just browse to where you stored the font file, the extension will be .ttf, and click on it to bring up the installation screen. Click on Install up in the left hand corner and it will be installed to your device.

Note: Fonts do not roam between devices so if you want to use this on other devices you will need to copy the font file to those and install it on each one separately.

Now when you open programs such as Microsoft Word, Notepad, and other software that supports TrueTupe fonts you will have access to your personalized handwriting font.

Here is a sample of my font in Microsoft Word and then a sample of my actual handwriting below it.

I can see where I wrote some characters as they were shown on the screen and what I should have done is written them in my style. I will probably go back through the process and tweak this a bit to get a better match.

Update: I went back through the font creation process with an effort to better reflect how I write characters. It seems to be a little better this time around. I do notice that the slant of my handwriting is missing in the font while the individual characters are fairly accurate.

What do you think?

Microsoft Font Maker App Screenshot Gallery