Brother P-touch Editor vs gLabels

Brother P-touch Editor 6 is free software for designing and printing custom labels. It supports styled text, images and barcodes, including QR code labels, and tables can contain text, numbers, symbols or barcode data. Designs can draw on more than 700 clip-art items, frames, patterns and shape tools. For text, users can choose installed TrueType or OpenType fonts or fonts included with the software. Search helps find templates and previously created labels. Label content can be drawn from Excel and other databases, including for mailing lists and asset-management labeling. Brother lists JPEG, GIF, BMP, PNG and TIF/TIFF image support. Barcode and specialty labels may be printed individually or in batches. Printing requires connecting a compatible P-touch or Brother QL printer to a PC through USB or Bluetooth. Brother describes the software as compatible with Windows and Macintosh and says it works with select P-touch and QL models. The Windows version is listed as 6.0. For macOS 10.15 or higher, Brother directs users to download the app from the App Store.

gLabels is a desktop GUI program for laying out and printing labels and business cards on peel-off sheets for laser or ink-jet printers. Designs can combine text, images, lines, shapes, and barcodes. Its document merge uses records from an external data source, such as a CSV file, to create a different label for each record. Example uses include address labels, name tags, price tags, and CD/DVD labels. gLabels is free, with a plan listed at free, and runs on Linux, macOS, and Windows.

The project describes gLabels-qt as development work toward gLabels 4, the next major release. There are currently no official releases of version 4 or self-hosted binary snapshots; users are encouraged to build the code themselves. Listed additions include a Qt6 rewrite, an activity-based interface, user-defined variables, continuous-roll support, and new product templates. The legacy 3.x version has not been supported since 2018. gLabels-qt is licensed under the GNU GPL version 3 or, optionally, a later version, and is distributed without warranty.