This was the first project I shared online, all the way back in 2018. I was preparing to go to college to study graphic design, and was trying to develop a portfolio ahead of time. I remember being blown away by the response – my work was shared on websites I'd followed for years (Cult of Mac, The Mac Observer, Loop Insight), and even written about in German (iFun).
The font picker is one of the most commonly used drop down menus in any creative application. Despite this, the default font picker on macOS has remained largely unchanged since the early days.
1984
2018
The number of fonts has certainly changed, as have the fonts themselves, but the fundamental way to pick one has remained the same – a simple drop down list, ordered alphabetically.
The more fonts you add, the longer the list gets. A list that's too long becomes cluttered and hard to navigate. There's no way to de-clutter the list by manually selecting what fonts appear first.
Any time you use a font, it is automatically added to the top of the "recents" section. This means even fonts you use only once get prime spot at the top of the list for a period of time. For most use cases, this is not ideal behaviour.
Typing a key on the keyboard usually takes you to the first font beginning with that letter. Apart from using the arrow keys to manually move through each font, there's no easy way to navigate the native font picker with a keyboard.
Simply put: an app that pairs you with another random stranger from somewhere else on the planet. There's no personal information involved, all you need to provide is a name. Once you're paired, you can talk to your partner as much, or as little as you like. If you don’t like what someone’s saying, you can block them. They’ll disappear from your life, and their spot will be filled by someone else, and you’ll never see them again.