ColrPak

A desktop color font editor for COLRv0 and COLRv1 fonts

Project maintained by mitradranirban Hosted on GitHub Pages — Theme by mattgraham

Installation Instructions for Colr Pak

Instruction for Linux

  1. Open your browser and go to Colr Pak Release Section

  2. Under Assets, download the Linux file colrpak-linux.tar.gz or colrpak-linux-arm64.tar.gz

  3. Right click and select Extract

  4. Inside the extracted colrpak-linux folder, click on colrpak app

  5. In the confirmation dialog click Execute.

The ready-made apps are not code signed so require special treatment in MS Windows and MacOS

Instructions for Windows (10 or 11)

Step 1: Enable Developer Mode

  1. Open Settings → Privacy & Security → For developers (Windows 11), or Settings → Update & Security → For developers (Windows 10)

  2. Toggle Developer Mode to On

  3. Click Yes when prompted and restart your PC

Step 2: Download the App

  1. Open your browser and go to: Release Section

  2. Under Assets, download the Windows app file colrpak-windows.zip

  3. Save it to a known location, e.g. your Downloads folder

Step 3: Unblock the Downloaded File

Windows may quarantine files downloaded from the internet:

  1. Extract the zip file by right-clicking and selecting Extract

  2. Right-click the downloaded file → select Properties

  3. On the General tab, look for an “Unblock” checkbox at the bottom

  4. Check Unblock, then click Apply → OK

Step 4: Install the App

  1. Double-click the .exe

  2. If a blue “Windows protected your PC” SmartScreen dialog appears, click More info

  3. Click “Run anyway”

Instructions for MacOS

Due to quarantine issues of unsigned apps in MacOS it is peferably installed through homebrew

Step 1: Install Homebrew

If you don’t have Homebrew yet, install it by running this in Terminal: ​

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

Step 2: Add the Custom Tap

Since colr-pak is distributed via a third-party tap (not the main Homebrew repository), you must add it first:

brew tap mitradranirban/tap

Step 3: Install colr-pak

Install the app using the –cask flag and remove quarantine for macOS Gatekeeper for this unsigned app:

bash
brew install --cask mitradranirban/tap/colr-pak
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "/Applications/Colr Pak.app"

Note: The xattr flag is needed because colr-pak is currently unsigned. Without it, macOS will block the app from launching with a “developer cannot be verified” error

Step 4: If the App Still Won’t Open

On Apple Silicon Macs (M1/M2/M3), the quarantine attribute sometimes persists even after installation. If you see a “colr-pak is damaged and can’t be opened” message, remove it manually by writing this command in terminal:

sudo xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "/Applications/Colr Pak.app"

Alternatively, you can right-click the app in Finder → Open → click Open in the dialog to approve it once.

Step 5: Build from source

If it still doesn’t work in Apple M1/M2/M3 etc for Apple gatekeeper policy, you can build from source as indicated in README which will self sign your app.

Step 6: Launch colr-pak

Open colr-pak from your Applications folder or via Launchpad

The app starts a local Fontra server and automatically opens in your browser for editing COLRv1 color fonts