Indie developer Jeff Johnson is out with a new Safari extension that aims to block web fonts different than the installed fonts on your device. Dubbed “StopTheFonts,” the extension is highly customizable, allowing you to create rules for different websites, block all web fonts by default, and more.
StopTheFonts joins Johnson’s other popular Safari extension StopTheMadness, which is a more wide-ranging app that blocks all kinds of website “annoyances and privacy violations.” For instance, StopTheMadness can block tracking URLs, stop autoplaying videos, re-enable like copy and paste on websites that block those features (like banking websites), and more.
StopTheFonts is more narrowed in scope and is designed as a Safari extension to block web fonts on iOS and macOS. Web fonts, for those unfamiliar, are fonts on a website that load from the web rather than the installed fonts on your device. Why are web fonts something you might want to block on your devices? Johnson explains:
There are a number of reasons to use StopTheFonts: to protect your privacy, because every web font is loaded over the web, exposing your IP address and possibly other information, often to third parties; to make web pages load faster, because they don’t have to wait for the fonts to load; to save bandwidth on carrier-limited connections.
StopTheFonts is versatile and offers to block all web fonts by default or to customize and create specific rules for different URLs.
You can set StopTheFonts to block all web fonts by default or to allow all web fonts by default. For the simplest usage of StopTheFonts, just block everything. For more advanced usage, you can create rules for specific URLs. There are two rule types: web font rules and web site rules. A web font rule allows or blocks a specific font URL on every web site, whereas a web site rule allows or blocks all web fonts on a specific site URL. Regex is available as an option for URLs.
If you want to install custom fonts on your Mac, iPhone, or iPad that don’t load over the web every time, Apple has guides for that on its support website:
StopTheMadness is one of the first apps that I make sure to install on a new iPhone, iPad, or Mac. It really does make the browsing experience in Safari significantly faster and more “native” to the experience for which Apple develops. StopTheFonts looks like another great addition to the Safari extension offering from Johnson.
You download StopTheFonts from the App Store as a one-time purchase of $2.99. It’s available for Mac, iPhone, and iPad. If you want to try out StopTheMadness, you can learn more via Johnson’s website and find it on the App Store as well.
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