Glyphs 4 Text Preview and right sidebar

miroslavmajdak · July 22, 2026, 11:23am

Hey!

I love the new Glyphs 4 Text Preview features; however, there are some issues when the window is narrow, as you can see in the screenshot. The top-right buttons do not work when you click on them in this view (screenshot), either in split-screen (fullscreen window) or in windowed view.

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Also, I think the right panel could be more polished; it seems everything is placed there randomly. It’s working, but the UI could get more attention, I think.

In the screenshots below, I sketch how the vertical spacing could look with some refinements without changing the existing design much. It’s still not perfect; just a quick sketch. The whole layout could get more love in my opinion, but with just a few improvements it at least looks more intentional and professional.

Cheers!

GeorgSeifert · July 22, 2026, 10:29pm

Resize the sidebar and see how things are positioned. There compromises when resizing and perfect positioning/alignment collide.

miroslavmajdak · July 22, 2026, 10:56pm

Yes, I know, but still, everything looks aligned randomly; even Glyphs 3 looks more polished.

It could be more responsive and aligned (same padding across sections) at the same time (that’s what I mean by the sketch I posted—responsive, aligned layout on the same vertical line/padding). Look at Figma’s sidebar, for example; it’s nicely aligned, spaced, and responsive when you resize it.

I know this is probably not as important as stability, fixing bugs, and other features now, and I agree, but it could be nice to have V4 as polished as possible.

sugarfree · July 23, 2026, 2:28am

The mockup doesn’t actually look better. The text fields for Transformations are confusingly wide.

miroslavmajdak · July 23, 2026, 10:05am

I agree; it’s not ideal. Text values should be centered to be responsive in that layout for Transformations. That’s why I say it’s a quick sketch to show that everything in Glyphs 4 is placed there randomly, and also why I say that the sidebar could get some redesign (not just the adjustments I show), similar to Figma’s sidebar.

SCarewe · July 23, 2026, 10:05am

I agree, they’re far too wide.

The current palettes are individual plugins. I don’t see why they should be more aligned with one another.

GeorgSeifert · July 23, 2026, 10:52am

I keep it in mind.
If you could do the sketch with a 50% wider sidebar, too?

miroslavmajdak · July 30, 2026, 5:18pm

Yes, I also redesigned it to show my points better.

I made two versions, one which copies the current layout [A], and the other which is more uniform [B].

A layout
Default panel:

Editing glyph panel (just more categories in there like axis weight, example of more layers, etc.):

(It may be a great feature to have an option to reorder or customise the panel categories.)

B layout
Default panel:

Editing glyph panel (just more categories in there like axis weight, example of more layers, etc.):

Note:
I don’t want to say it needs to be like this od asking you to redesign it like this; I just wanted to demonstrate what I mean by polishing it by aligning the panel boxes and still making them responsive at the same time.

Note 2:
The new Text preview features buttons are still not working in a narrow window. Other than that, amazing work with version 4 guys!

FlorianPircher · July 30, 2026, 5:44pm

I agree that there could be more vertical alignment in the palette, but the compact layout with little vertical whitespace serves users with small screens (MacBooks displays are very commonly used) and users with many palettes provided by plug-ins (again, common), which make vertical space a premium for any size screen.