xfontsel

Launch font selector

$ xfontsel

$ xfontsel -pattern "[*medium*]"

$ xfontsel -print

$ xfontsel -sample "[The quick brown fox]"

$ xfontsel -scaled

xfontsel [options]

xfontsel provides an interactive GUI for browsing and selecting X11 core fonts using XLFD (X Logical Font Description) names. It displays dropdown menus for each component of the 14-part XLFD font name.
Clicking on a field name shows available options filtered by previous selections. The asterisk (*) acts as a wildcard. A preview of the selected font is displayed, and the full XLFD name can be copied to the clipboard.
The selected font name becomes the PRIMARY text selection and PRIMARY_FONT selection, allowing paste into terminal emulators and other applications.

-pattern fontname

Filter fonts matching pattern.

Print selected font name to stdout on quit.

Custom sample text for preview.

Sample text for 16-bit fonts.

Sample text for UCS fonts.

Include scaled fonts in selection.

X display to use.

Only shows X11 core fonts (XLFD), not modern fontconfig/FreeType fonts. Limited usefulness on modern systems using Xft fonts. Legacy tool superseded by graphical font selectors.

xfontsel was created by Ralph R. Swick at Digital Equipment Corporation/MIT Project Athena. It was essential when XLFD fonts were the primary font system on X11. Modern systems primarily use fontconfig and Xft, making xfontsel mainly useful for legacy applications.

xlsfonts(1), fc-list(1), xfd(1), xterm(1)