How to Access Alternate Characters in Affinity Designer (Even If You are New to It)

We recently received a question from a user who couldn’t figure out how to access alternate characters from one of our fonts in Affinity Designer. And honestly — we get it. Sometimes these features feel a bit hidden!

While we’re not daily users of Affinity Designer ourselves, we took the time to look into it and refer directly to Affinity’s official documentation to help anyone facing the same issue.

So if you’re here wondering “Why can't I find the alternate letters in Affinity Designer?” — this one’s for you.

Many of our fonts (and others on the market) include special design features called OpenType features, things like stylistic alternates, ligatures, swashes, and more. These extras make your typography look more expressive, elegant, and custom-made.

But here’s the catch: every design software has its own way of accessing these features.

Here’s what we found from Affinity’s official guide:

1. Select your text.
2. Open the Character Panel (View > Studio > Character).
3. Look for the OpenType icon (usually labeled “OT”) — click it.
4. If the font supports it, you’ll see options like:
   • Stylistic Alternates
   • Ligatures
   • Swashes
   • Stylistic Sets (SS01, SS02, etc.)
5. Enable the feature(s) you want to activate.

Note: These features only appear if the font actually includes them, The majority of our fonts include beautiful stylistic alternates to enhance your designs.

If alternate characters aren’t showing up in Affinity Designer for desktop, it might be because of software limitations, missing font features, or hidden panels. Make sure you’ve:

• Enabled the Character Panel (View > Studio > Character)

• Clicked the OpenType (OT) icon to see available features

If you still don’t see any alternates, your font might not include them — or Affinity may not be reading them properly. As a workaround, you can:

• Use Character Map (Windows)

• Use Font Book (Mac)

• Visit FontDrop.app to explore glyphs online
  Then, copy and paste the characters you want into your design. Manual, but effective!

Some users actually find it easier to access alternates on the iPad version of Affinity Designer. The mobile UI can sometimes display glyph features more intuitively — depending on the version or font used.

If alternates are working fine on your tablet, that’s awesome! But if not, you can still use external tools to grab the alternate glyphs and paste them into your design. It’s a helpful workaround when built-in access isn't available.

We’re not Affinity pros (yet), and this article was written based on Affinity’s official documentation. We hope it helps users who are stuck — but if anything seems off, feel free to double-check with Affinity support!

Source: Affinity Designer Official Documentation – OpenType Features