Select the text object containing the glyph you want to snap to.
Last updated on
Sep 11, 2025
Learn to snap to individual glyphs, release glyph selections, and change glyph guide colors for precise text alignment.
Use glyph guides to precisely align objects to individual characters in your text. To snap objects accurately in Adobe Illustrator, follow these steps:
Snap to glyph
Right-click the specific glyph and select Snap to Glyph. The selected glyph is highlighted with guides around its bounds, center, and straight segments. Glyphs won’t highlight if the text has strokes, patterns, effects, or other appearance settings. Guides appear only on straight paths, not curves.
To release or stop the individual glyph selection and snapping, right-click the glyph and select Release Snap to Glyph or select Release Glyph in the Control panel.
Tip
Arabic and Hebrew users can apply glyphs from the default character set. To explore and insert glyphs from the default or other language sets, use the Glyphs panel (Type > Glyphs).
Change the color of glyph guides
To change the default green color of glyph guides, follow these steps:
Select Edit > Preferences > Smart Guides (Windows) or Illustrator > Settings > Smart Guides (macOS).
Select a new color from the drop-down menu options.
Manage missing glyph protection
Missing glyph protection is enabled by default in Illustrator. The text is managed automatically when a font lacks specific glyphs. To turn off this feature, follow these steps:
Select Edit > Preferences > Type (Windows) or Illustrator > Settings > Type (macOS).
Uncheck the Enable Missing Glyph Protection option.
Note
Traditional fonts, such as AXT, are still supported, but it's recommended that text-based elements be created using the newer OpenType fonts.
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