Devanagari Type Tester
A tiny web tool for previewing how Devanagari renders across web fonts — kerning, conjuncts, matras, and line height.
Devanagari rendering on the web is quietly difficult. Conjuncts (संयुक्ताक्षर), matras (मात्रा), and the रेफ / इकार positioning all behave differently across fonts, and most type testers were built for Latin. This is a small tool to fill that gap.
What it does
- Live-preview arbitrary Devanagari text across a curated font stack.
- Toggle line-height, letter-spacing, and font-feature settings.
- Compare Noto Sans Devanagari, Mukta, and a few open-source alternatives side by side.
Why it matters
If you build anything for the Nepali web, you discover quickly that "it works in Latin" is not a guarantee. The tester exists so that the five minutes you spend choosing a font can be informed ones.
A note on the font stack
The recommended stack, in order of preference:
font-family: "Noto Sans Devanagari", "Mukta", system-ui, sans-serif;Noto for coverage, Mukta for warmth, system-ui as the graceful fallback. Set line-height to at least 1.8 for Devanagari blocks — the script needs room to breathe in a way Latin does not.