HarfBuzz (loose transliteration of Persian calque حرف‌باز harf-bāz, literally "open type")[2][3] is a software library for supporting text shaping, which is the process of converting Unicode text to glyph indices and positions.

The newer version, New HarfBuzz (2012–), targets various font technologies while the first version, Old HarfBuzz (2006–2012), targeted only OpenType fonts.

[2][4] HarfBuzz evolved from code that was originally part of the FreeType project.

Then it was merged back into a common repository with an MIT license.

[2] In 2013, Behdad Esfahbod won the O’Reilly Open Source Award for his work on HarfBuzz.