Boxed questions marks everywhere

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Boxed questions marks everywhere

I've asked this question before with conflicting replies. I'm running a MacBook Air with Safari, Pages, Numbers, etc. All are up-to-date according to Apple.

MacOS Mojave v10.14.5 Darwin v18.6.0 kernel

System report shows that valid, enabled fonts for all the True Type, OpenType, and Postscript in /Library/Fonts

I'm getting boxed question marks in virtually all text: Apple diagnostics, Apple Activity Monitor, websites, Pages documents, and the like. Some text appears, some do not. Refreshing a page may change what is legible; or more likely, not. I'm not running Fusion Suitcase or anything else like it. I've followed instructions to FontBook (remove duplicates, re-load standard fonts, etc.) with no apparent effect.

MacBook Air 13", macOS 10.14

Posted on Jun 14, 2019 10:46 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

leroydouglas

Community+ 2024

Level 10

188,466 points

Jun 14, 2019 11:02 AM in response to rjhammell

Font Book.app>File>Restore Standard Fonts

If all that fails then proceed—

If it is a corrupt font cache for your Mac you can try removing all font cache files including system and logged in user account.

Close all running applications.

From the terminal.app copy and paste:

sudo atsutil databases -remove

(Please note your psswd will not echo on screen, type it in anyway)

After entering the command, quite Terminal and restart your Mac

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Answer 2

Jun 14, 2019 11:10 AM in response to rjhammell

rjhammell wrote:

If I could. Your statement "From the terminal app copy and paste:

{a complete line of boxed question marks}

(Please note...

Boot into Recovery (Command R) and from the dropdown menu: Utilities> Disk Utility> run the First Aid on your Macintosh HD. If errors are found and repaired, run again until no errors reported.

Recovery: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904

You have access to the terminal in Recovery mode as well— try that.

If not try Single User mode: command S on boot up

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