Guide: choose an accessible font

fonts bundles 46 families so a Go program can ship legible text without sourcing or downloading a .ttf. This guide is about picking the right one — not just the default.

Just want something legible? Use the default

f, err := fonts.Parse(fonts.MostLegible())

MostLegible() returns Atkinson Hyperlegible, designed by the Braille Institute of America specifically to maximise character distinction for readers with low vision — the letterforms that are easiest to confuse in most sans-serifs (I/l/1, O/0) are deliberately differentiated. That benefits every reader, not only low-vision ones, which is why it's the package default rather than an opt-in.

Picking by role

fonts.All() returns every bundled Family, each tagged with a Kind (KindSans, KindSerif, KindMono) so you can filter for a role rather than hardcode a name:

for _, fam := range fonts.All() {
    if fam.Kind == fonts.KindMono {
        // e.g. Go Mono or JetBrains Mono — a code block face
    }
}

Or look one up by name to discover its import path (Family carries no []byte — enumerating or searching families never links their bytes in; you still import the subpackage to reach the bytes themselves):

fam, ok := fonts.ByName("Lora") // case-insensitive
if ok {
    fmt.Println(fam.ImportPath) // github.com/go-opentype/fonts/lora
}
// import "github.com/go-opentype/fonts/lora", then:
f, err := fonts.Parse(lora.TTF)

What's bundled, and why you'd pick it

Family	Kind	Best for
Atkinson Hyperlegible	Sans	Default choice; body text where legibility matters most
Inter	Sans	UI chrome, dense interfaces, a more neutral geometric sans
Go	Sans	The Go project's own sans — a natural pick for Go-tooling UIs
Lora	Serif	Longer-form reading, editorial contexts
Go Mono	Mono	Code, matching the Go sans above
JetBrains Mono	Mono	Code, wider ligature-friendly monospace

The variable-font caveat

Inter, Lora, and JetBrains Mono ship as variable fonts upstream (a single file spanning a weight/width axis range). go-opentype/fonts pins each to its default static instance — the .ttf bundled here is one fixed weight, not the full variable range — to keep the bundle simple and small, not because the engine can't handle axes: opentype fully supports OpenType Variations, including SetVariation to instance any axis coordinate. If your design needs a specific weight along an axis (e.g. Inter at 600 rather than its default 400), source that family's variable .ttf yourself — from google/fonts, for instance — and drive it with opentype.Parse + (*Face).SetVariation(map[string]float64{"wght": 600}).

License obligations

The Go source in fonts is BSD-3-Clause, but the font files themselves keep their upstream licenses — OFL-1.1 for Atkinson Hyperlegible, Inter, Lora, and JetBrains Mono; BSD-3-Clause for Go/Go Mono. If you redistribute a binary that embeds these fonts, carry the corresponding license text from licenses/ along with it; see fonts for the full table and copyright lines.