How can I download WOFF files from Google Fonts?

Unfortunately Google does not offer an easy way to directly download fonts. You can browse the git repository to search for the file you want, though there are only TTF files on GitHub available.

Also, do not directly link to the GitHub hosted fonts in your CSS! GitHub serves the files with the wrong mime type, which causes issues in some browsers.

While there is not a mainstream CDN for all the formats, you can use http://google-webfonts-helper.herokuapp.com to download the font files and host them yourselves.

When I open the following URL in Chrome, I get a link to the font in woff2 format. When I use Firefox, it's in woff format and in an Android device running pre-4.4, it is in ttf format.

http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Open+Sans

So it appears that Google delivers fonts in a format appropriate to the requesting user-agent.

Another option is using the following (node) gulp package: gulp-google-webfonts.

Once installed it takes moments to install fonts and create corresponding css.

Note that when installing a Google Font with whitespace in the name, (you don't escape it) reference it with the plus sign as follows:

fonts.list

Cabin+Sketch:400