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⇱ HarfBuzz 12.3 Released - Nice Performance Improvements To This Text Shaping Engine - Phoronix

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HarfBuzz 12.3 Released - Nice Performance Improvements To This Text Shaping Engine

Written by Michael Larabel in Free Software on 27 December 2025 at 03:46 PM EST. 1 Comment
HarfBuzz 12.3 was just released for ending out 2025 with some nice performance improvements to this widely-used text shaping engine. HarfBuzz in turn is used by the prominent Linux desktop environments, Java, Flutter, various game engines, and apps like Chrome and Firefox for text shaping needs with OpenType fonts and more.

HarfBuzz 12.3 brings various fixes, support for full-instancing fonts with the v2 avar table, and other updates. Exciting me the most with this release are the new performance optimizations:
- AAT shaping: speed up state machine on Apple silicon using a fast-path. 12% faster in LucidaGrande benchmark.
- OpenType shaping: speed up (Chain)Context lookup shaping using a fast-path and Coverage caching. 20% speedup in NotoNastaliqUrdu benchmark.
- Drawing mega variable-fonts: 30% speedup on GoogleSansFlex benchmark.
- Drawing VARC fonts: 5% speedup on varc-hanzi benchmark.

Some nice gains for ending out the year with this widely-used library.

👁 HarfBuzz logo


More details on the newly-minted HarfBuzz 12.3 release via GitHub.

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.