Removing fonts from the System folder (when they are locked)

Question

Removing fonts from the System folder (when they are locked)

Dear community and Mac experts,

I'm on Mac OS Mojave (10.14.6) and encounter what seems to be broken font files in my System folder (/System/Library/Fonts/). Actually they are font files I had installed with Apple's Font Manager, they don't seem to be original system fonts that had come with Mojave. Anyhow, they are conflicting with other fonts of the same family resulting in "broken text" (cryptic letters). So I thought I'd just move them out of the system's font folder and see if there's any improvement.

As you guys may very well know (and what I have learned just recently) it's not possible removing font files from the System folder: neither in Finder, nor with the Terminal, even when logged in as root, doing "sudo" or even stating "sudo" as root user. Moving or removing of the files "is not permitted".

The next thing I tried was booting from an external USB drive, opeing the Terminal app and trying to move the files from there. But booting from an install medium the disk drives seem to be mouned "read-only" prohibitting any change to the files. I didn't want to mess up everything by changing filesystems on re-mounting and stuff. So...

I thought of starting the iMac in hard drive mode to access the files via thunderbolt from my MacBook but somehow I doubt it'll mount and show the System folder which keeps me from spending $ 90 for thunderbolt cables and adapters (v3 to v2) – for a mere experiment.

My question to those who might know:

Is there ANY chance to remove font files (besides a complete re-installation)? As I have no idea...

Thank you!

iMac 27″ 5K, macOS 10.14

Posted on Oct 24, 2020 2:56 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Eau Rouge

Level 8

42,656 points

Oct 24, 2020 5:53 AM in response to Gregor Tatschl

This could be due to SIP ( System Integrity Protection) being enabled.

Boot to your Recovery HD.

Open Terminal from Utilities in the menubar.

Enter the text below

csrutil disable

press Return.

Restart your mac normally.

See if you can delete your fonts now.

Boot back to the Recovery HD

Open Terminal as before now enter

csrutil enable

press Return

Restart your mac again.

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Answer 2

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,504 points

Oct 24, 2020 5:11 AM in response to Gregor Tatschl

That folder is probably on the Read Only system volume, so there are no tricks you can use to remove them.

You need to boot from a different source, mount that volume, and delete them from there. You can do that from Recovery if you are adept using the command line.

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Answer 3

Oct 24, 2020 8:31 AM in response to Barney-15E

Hi Barney, thanks for the hint! That's kind of what I tried: I created a bootable USB drive, restarted from there, opened the terminal – but I could not really mount the physical volumes. I tried it with the Disk Utilty in Finder, and I tried it in the Terminal app, but as the volumes are read-only I wasn't able to mount the disks (into a directory). That left me wondering...

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Answer 4

Eau Rouge

Level 8

42,656 points

Oct 24, 2020 5:48 AM in response to Barney-15E

He is using Mojave.

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Answer 5

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

122,330 points

Oct 24, 2020 8:25 AM in response to Gregor Tatschl

This may help

http://www.jklstudios.com/misc/osxfonts.html

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Answer 6

Oct 24, 2020 8:32 AM in response to Eau Rouge

Hi Eau Rouge! Thanks for the advise. I'll try it eventually. Maybe it works after booting from the USB drive (it didn't work booting from the internal drive though).

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