CircuitPython supports two font formats: the textual .bdf format and the binary .pcf format. By taking the extra step of converting your font to .pcf you make fonts load faster and also typically save some storage space on the board CIRCUITPY flash drive.

The converter software is hosted on github.io. Thanks to technology called emscripten, it runs entirely in your web browser—the font file is not uploaded to a server, which also makes it really quick. web-bdftopcf is derived from the classic font converter of the same name, a program for Unix/Linux systems. If you're interested, you can browse the C source on github.

Head to https://adafruit.github.io/web-bdftopcf/ and click the "Browse" button.

Select a .bdf file from your computer and click Open.

After a moment, the font will be prepared in .pcf format and depending on your browser settings it may be automatically downloaded or you may have to confirm that you want to download the file.

In this particular case, the .pcf version of the font is only half the size of the .bdf font, which leaves more space on the CIRCUITPY drive for other assets like sound files and bitmaps.

This guide was first published on Feb 18, 2019. It was last updated on Feb 18, 2019.

This page (Convert to PCF) was last updated on Jan 05, 2021.

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