Unable To Add Font To System...Fonts - Font Book Flickers

The entire System folder is off limits in Catalina. It's read only while booted to that volume.

Have you tried putting the font in the root /Library/Fonts/ folder? Any fonts there can be seen by any user account and the system.

If this app truly only see fonts in the System folder, then that is one incredibly, poorly written piece of junk.

Drag it into /Library/Fonts folder.

However, I feel it is important to remind others to avoid flaming others.

I wasn't flaming you. My note was directed at any app vendor who do not follow standard programming APIs for the Mac and access fonts the same way every app is supposed to. Hard wiring an app to look in only one specific location (two, in this case) is very poor programming. There's no reason at all the app shouldn't also recognize fonts in your user account.

Microsoft is, after all these years, still on the list of dumb programmers regarding fonts. It's the only app I've ever used that does not recognize any fonts you activate after the Office apps are already open. In order to get Word/PowerPoint/Excel/Outlook to see any newly activated font, you have to close the app and relaunch it. Why?

Font Book has no option to install the font in this "third" folder.

It does, and always has. However, it's not very clearly defined. Open the preferences for Font Book. You'll see a single drop down menu to choose where user added fonts go to. The default is User, which of course is the Fonts folder of the user account currently logged in. The other is the somewhat vague, Computer. That is the root /Library/Fonts/ folder.

Kurt Lang wrote: The entire System folder is off limits in Catalina. It's read only while booted to that volume.

Do you know if you can add a font to System while booted into another MacOS install?

There is ample discussion about /Library/Fonts, but let's not overlook that simply dragging and dropping a non-duplicate font into your local /User/yourname/Library/Fonts folder places the font into one of the default System font search locations. In my experience, this font becomes readily available to applications without the need to log out, reboot, or contend with macOS filesystem issues.

Yup. You can do anything you want to a volume that isn't currently the boot volume. I note that a few times in my font article.

I was mostly just seeing if the most obnoxious workaround isn't necessary and the font would work just as well from the /Library/Fonts/ folder.

Now I see you are flaming MS.

It isn't possible for the truth to be flaming. Yes, it is dumb that after decades, and multiple releases of Office, the suite still doesn't follow standard OS procedures regarding fonts. There's simply no excuse for a professional app used by millions of businesses and individual users to force you to fully close an app and restart it just so it will recognize a recently activated font. While at the same time, it sure lets you know if you've disabled a font while the app is running.

When I switched it to "Computer" the installation appeared to take place, but did not.

Apple's current note on that is you need to provide your admin password before any third party fonts can be placed into the /Library/Fonts/ folder. This is particularly odd in Catalina since all OS installed fonts are now in the System folder. Since that means the root /Library/Fonts/ folder is empty (save for one alias that points to Arial Unicode in the System folder), and is now essentially only for third party fonts, why should you need to provide an admin password to place your fonts there?

I think we're all often reminded of how little we know. Computers are such complicated devices, there isn't any possible way for anyone to know more than 5% of it at an "expert" level. If even that much.

Apple's standard font installation disclosure…

Haha! Haven't heard/read that one in a while. Considering how old the series is, some of the episodes are still pretty good.

Thanks, Kurt. I learn something new here every day.