Duibhlinn is based on the classic standard Gaelic typeface of the 1930s. One version of this was the Monotype Series 24 A font, ca. 1906-1922; this was recast by Michael O'Rahilly in 1913. Duibhlinn was first digitized in 1993 by Michael Everson and originally used the MacGaelic character set on the Macintosh platform, and ISO/IEC 8859-14 on the PC. In 2008 Duibhlinn version 3 was released in OpenType format, completely compliant with Unicode encoding and with an extended character set.

Duibhlinn has been used by the Irish Department of the Taoiseach to typeset the “Enrolled” version of the Irish Constitution, which presents the text as it was voted on, with the older sections in the Gaelic script.