Unwanted fonts!!
Why can't I remove all these Asian fonts that clutter my font list? There were Asian fonts before but now there are far too many.
I DON'T NEED THEM!!
Please make them removable with FontBook!!
grt,
Paul
iMac 27" 5K, macOS 10.15
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Why can't I remove all these Asian fonts that clutter my font list? There were Asian fonts before but now there are far too many.
I DON'T NEED THEM!!
Please make them removable with FontBook!!
grt,
Paul
iMac 27" 5K, macOS 10.15
I should clarify the paths. For "System", it's the /System/Library/Fonts/ folder. For "Supplemental", it's the /System/Library/Fonts/Supplemental/ folder.
It's not so much "it's good for you" as it is protecting the OS from malware. In Catalina, the OS is separated into a partition group (that's why APFS is required). The OS portion is on a read-only partition, which prevents any possible malware from modifying any files there, or adding anything to that location.
Since fonts are read in at startup, it's possible to infect a system by modifying them to contain unwanted code. Since any OS has no choice but to read in a font in order to use it, the attached malware would be read at the same time. This actually happened a few years back. Not to the Mac OS itself, but some OpenType fonts were going around that had been modified with attached malware. The OS has since been patched against that threat.
All of the included fonts are there because the Mac OS is a multi-national product. You and I may not use the Asian fonts, Devanagari, Gurmukhi or others, but someone does. This way, Apple only has to distribute one installer for any language. You don't see French (as an example) as a font because it uses English characters. It's the localized language files that take care of that difference. For French, the following are in every application package (along with quite a few others for various languages), which are French Canadian, and standard French, respectively.
fr_CA.lproj
fr.lproj
Anyway, if you'd like to read up on where this list derives from, you can read my article:
Required disclaimer: I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.
I should clarify the paths. For "System", it's the /System/Library/Fonts/ folder. For "Supplemental", it's the /System/Library/Fonts/Supplemental/ folder.
It's not so much "it's good for you" as it is protecting the OS from malware. In Catalina, the OS is separated into a partition group (that's why APFS is required). The OS portion is on a read-only partition, which prevents any possible malware from modifying any files there, or adding anything to that location.
Since fonts are read in at startup, it's possible to infect a system by modifying them to contain unwanted code. Since any OS has no choice but to read in a font in order to use it, the attached malware would be read at the same time. This actually happened a few years back. Not to the Mac OS itself, but some OpenType fonts were going around that had been modified with attached malware. The OS has since been patched against that threat.
All of the included fonts are there because the Mac OS is a multi-national product. You and I may not use the Asian fonts, Devanagari, Gurmukhi or others, but someone does. This way, Apple only has to distribute one installer for any language. You don't see French (as an example) as a font because it uses English characters. It's the localized language files that take care of that difference. For French, the following are in every application package (along with quite a few others for various languages), which are French Canadian, and standard French, respectively.
fr_CA.lproj
fr.lproj
Anyway, if you'd like to read up on where this list derives from, you can read my article:
Required disclaimer: I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.
Because all fonts included with Catalina are in the System folder, there is no font manager that can disable them.
Your only option is to boot your Mac to any other OS you have installed so you can delete the unwanted fonts from the non-startup drive.
There are a LOT of fonts you don't need. This is all I have on my Mac:
System folder:
Apple Color Emoji.ttc
AppleSDGothicNeo.ttc
Avenir.ttc
Courier.dfont
Geneva.dfont
Helvetica.ttc
HelveticaNeue.ttc
HelveticaNeueDeskInterface.ttc
Keyboard.ttf
LastResort.otf
LucidaGrande.ttc
Menlo.ttc
Monaco.dfont
PingFang.ttc
SFCompactDisplay.ttf
SFCompactRounded.ttf
SFCompactText.ttf
SFCompactTextItalic.ttf
SFNS.ttf
SFNSDisplayCondensed-Black.otf
SFNSDisplayCondensed-Bold.otf
SFNSDisplayCondensed-Heavy.otf
SFNSDisplayCondensed-Light.otf
SFNSDisplayCondensed-Medium.otf
SFNSDisplayCondensed-Regular.otf
SFNSDisplayCondensed-Semibold.otf
SFNSDisplayCondensed-Thin.otf
SFNSDisplayCondensed-Ultralight.otf
SFNSItalic.ttf
SFNSMono.ttf
SFNSMonoItalic.ttf
SFNSRounded.ttf
SFNSTextCondensed-Bold.otf
SFNSTextCondensed-Heavy.otf
SFNSTextCondensed-Light.otf
SFNSTextCondensed-Medium.otf
SFNSTextCondensed-Regular.otf
SFNSTextCondensed-Semibold.otf
Symbol.ttf
Times.ttc
ZapfDingbats.ttf
Supplemental subfolder:
AppleGothic.ttf
Arial Black.ttf
Arial Bold Italic.ttf
Arial Bold.ttf
Arial Italic.ttf
Arial Narrow Bold Italic.ttf
Arial Narrow Bold.ttf
Arial Narrow Italic.ttf
Arial Narrow.ttf
Arial Rounded Bold.ttf
Arial.ttf
Comic Sans MS Bold.ttf
Comic Sans MS.ttf
Georgia Bold Italic.ttf
Georgia Bold.ttf
Georgia Italic.ttf
Georgia.ttf
Impact.ttf
Tahoma Bold.ttf
Tahoma.ttf
Times New Roman Bold Italic.ttf
Times New Roman Bold.ttf
Times New Roman Italic.ttf
Times New Roman.ttf
Trebuchet MS Bold Italic.ttf
Trebuchet MS Bold.ttf
Trebuchet MS Italic.ttf
Trebuchet MS.ttf
Verdana Bold Italic.ttf
Verdana Bold.ttf
Verdana Italic.ttf
Verdana.ttf
Webdings.ttf
Wingdings 2.ttf
Wingdings 3.ttf
Wingdings.ttf
You're welcome.
Yeah, it's a bit tedious to have to setup yet another OS to boot to so you can remove fonts from a different drive/partition, but it's the only "easy" way.
The other is knowing enough about navigating in Terminal (while in a Recovery Mode boot) to remove items via Unix commands. And even that I haven't tested yet to see if it can be done.
Not those. Font Book displays a lot of Asian and other foreign language fonts you have no control over. They're listed, but all grayed out. You can't disable them. You also can't disable anything in the System folder.
Many of those Asian fonts aren't even in the System or root Library folders. They're buried in the OS as stub (subset) fonts. In Catalina, they're all in this location:
/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/FontServices.framework/Versions/A/Resources/Fonts/Subsets/
You aren't supposed to see them at all. But in Mojave (and weirdly, not all versions of it), this very large set of subset fonts very annoyingly appear in all of your app's font lists.
Since Catalina is the OS in question for this topic, those subset fonts are correctly hidden from the user. The problem still remains that it's impossible to disable any fonts in the System folder with any font manager. Deleting these unnecessary fonts (for an English speaking user) is the only way to get them out of your font lists.
Well, what about Font Book in the Applications folder?
https://support.apple.com/guide/font-book/welcome/mac
I am able to add/delete fonts there all the time.
Thanks. Maybe I will try this, if I am confident I don't break the whole system!
Anyway, I don't like this Apple attitude: we think it's good for you, so you have to accept it...
Paul
Hello Kurt,
thanks for the additional information. I will try this soon.
Paul
Unwanted fonts!!