Disappearing Fonts

Hi Woodpig,

The following steps address what you're describing specifically, and should provide a solution:

"Install fonts

1. Double-click the font in the Finder.
2. Click Install in the font preview window that opens. The font then appears in the Font Book app, and is available for use in your apps.

If you want the fonts you install to also be available to other user accounts on your Mac, use Font Book settings to set the default install location.

Download or activate fonts

Open the Font Book app from your Applications folder. In Font Book, any fonts that are deactivated or haven't been downloaded from Apple are dimmed. 

• Select a font that hasn't been downloaded, then choose Edit > Download.
• Select a font that has been deactivated, then choose Edit > Activate (or Enable). When a font is deactivated, it remains installed but no longer appears in the font menus of your apps. You can deactivate any font that isn't required by your Mac."

You can find these steps along with other information that may be helpful, here: Install or remove fonts on your Mac - Apple Support

If you have followed the steps correctly and you still have the issue, let us know if you get any specific alerts or error messages when trying, as those may help us determine what might be causing the issue.

We hope this helps.

Cheers!

Before El Capitan, all OS installed fonts where available in all apps. Then Apple started hiding them. As etresoft noted, it's because Apple has always considered them only necessary for document support. What support is that? Good question. In the many previous years of OS X / macOS, I used to whittle the number of active fonts down to the bare minimum the OS needed to work as expected. I never opened a single document that didn't display as intended.

Side note, Athelas is not an Apple font (most of the fonts installed by the OS weren't created by Apple). Athelas is a font created in 2008 by TypeTogether.

Since at least Catalina, Apple has been hiding these support fonts from itself in every app Apple created. Font Book, Pages, Final Cut Pro, etc. In Ventura, the attempt was to hide these fonts from all apps. On my end, even though it hasn't had an update in a couple of years, Ultra Character Map instantly reacted to this change and shows no more of the system installed fonts than Font Book or Pages does.

It seems the Affinity apps are doing the same. Meaning, it's not a mistake, but an intended result. As one example, the Adobe apps completely ignore this change and list all active fonts. At least for now they do.

Why hide them at all? Who knows. And really, what's the difference if you use them? It's just another font. But you're correct that if you purchase Athelas, it will conflict with the installed version and you still won't be able to use it. You'd have to use a font editor to change the internal names to prevent the conflict. But then you'd likely be violating the copyright. And that may not be enough to get around Apple's block.

And going back to another of etresoft's comment, you can open any older document where you used Athelas and the font should appear. You can then possibly copy/paste any line of text from the old document into a new Publisher document to bridge Athelas over to it.

Otherwise, the best solution is to simply use something else. Fonts similar to Athelas. Then you have control of the font at all times. It will no longer matter what Apple does with its installed fonts.

Woodpig wrote:

I've contacted Affinity, and they think it's an Apple problem.

They always say that! 😄

This is all the result of a big fit people threw about these supplemental fonts in Monterey. In that case, it was Adobe blaming Apple. I wrote a demo app in about 10 minutes that conclusively proved that Adobe could have handled fonts better. Of course, Adobe said I was lying. So I wrote a little app to disable most of those supplemental fonts so that Adobe users would have useable font menus again. But I think that was the final straw. Apple is happy to have people blaming it or 3rd party developers. But they don't like it when someone just comes along and fixes it like I did. So, Apple applied their own fix in Ventura, breaking my app along the way.

I think it is Apple's fix that is causing a problem for Affinity.

As you can see, I have no problem using Athelas:

I also just found this thread:

I lost fonts: Athelas and Seravek at least - Apple Community

That's 7 years old. Ignore it.

Could it be that, since the problem has coincided with my upgrade to OS Ventura, Apple has decided to restrict the use of certain fonts that were previously available in apps under previous OS? If so, what can I do about it? I've formatted a whole book using this font, assuming that it was free with the OS.

No. It's still there. It's just a document support font.

However, I wasn't entirely truthful above. I did have no problem using Athelas. I downloaded it. Installed it. Created a document with it. But I did all of that on Monterey. It did work properly on Ventura as you can see. I copied that document from Monterey to Ventura. I opened it on Ventura and the Athelas document support font was used and available as it should have been.

But I couldn't reproduce all of that on Ventura itself. There are some bugs in Ventura that make this more difficult. It wasn't as easy to install and use Athelas on Ventura. Even though I installed Athelas, it wasn't available in the font menu. I had to use the "Show Fonts" operation in Text Edit and then pick "All Fonts" before I could pick Athelas in a new document. After restarting, it does show up properly in the font menu. But that's just Ventura. It's really buggy. 😄 I don't know why everyone jumps over each other to install it the day it comes out. I only use Ventura for testing and documenting issues like this. I do NOT use it for my work.

You can still use Athelas. You may have to install it briefly just to "prime the pump" and create a document that uses it. It doesn't matter if you get the duplicate warning. Once you have a document that uses Athelas, you can keep using it in that document. You can even delete you freebie version of Athelas and use the system version. But it will only be available in a document that already uses it.

Athelas is a document support font. It should be available if an existing document uses it. This font is part of the operating system so it is impossible to either remove or reinstall. It is possible that your document wants some different version of Athelas. It is also possible that it's just a bug in Affinity Publisher. Ventura did change how most 3rd party apps displayed fonts. They were displaying all "available" fonts and showing menus with 400 different fonts, most of them foreign language fonts. Perhaps Affinity Publisher is looking for the font in the "available" list rather than just using it and then returning an error if it isn't found.

Woodpig wrote:

Thank you, Lager1, but none of these options work, as Athelas is not listed as a font in Font Book - either dimmed or otherwise.

Document support fonts do not show up in Font Book.

Etresoft: I don't think it's an Affinity problem, as the font does not appear in other apps - e.g. Pages, Mail.

It's a document support font. It won't show up in any apps unless the document you are using already uses the font.

From what you describe, it's definitely an Affinity problem.

One thing that may have muddied the waters is that when I couldn't see the font, I downloaded it from somewhere and installed it. It then threw up a minor error (font duplicate). So I then deleted it, and now there is no Athelas at all.

I suggest you reinstall it. Just because there is a bug in Affinity doesn't mean there isn't a bug in Apple's side of things too. Apple's whole concept for these document support fonts is problematic.

Can someone please confirm that if I choose the "reset fonts" option in Font Book settings, that I won't lose all of the third party fonts I've downloaded in the past.

There is no problem with Font Book. You would be wasting your time. Supposedly, the documentation says that your personal fonts will only be moved aside into a "removed" folder, conveniently located in a hidden directory. But still, you should probably make a backup before doing that.

This will not be easy on a system where you cannot back down from Ventura. You probably already know this, but Adobe stopped selling fonts entirely back on June 1, 2022. The only way to access their font library now is to own at least one Creative Cloud app. You can then use the CC app's font access panel. It acts as its own font manager and activates fonts directly from Adobe's servers. They never exist on your computer.

Point there being I tested activating Athelas from Adobe's server. But it was difficult to know what I was looking at. Since the Adobe apps show all active local fonts, was that Athelas from the System folder or Adobe? I'd have to guess the former and that Adobe's version was conflicting without an error message since it didn't appear in TextEdit or any other apps where you wouldn't normally see the System's copy.

I also tried Athelas from the various copies I have from previous installs of macOS/OS X, and a few third party purchased copies. None would work, as expected, against the immutable System copy.

I should have time later today to play a bit more for a solution, but it isn't looking good.

I used FontLab to change the internal names to Athelas New and saved it out as a new font. That does work. The altered font appears in Font Book, Pages, TextEdit and anywhere else.

However, it can't legally be used. It was only a test to see what Ventura would do with such a variation. You'd have to contact the copyright owner and ask for permission to make such a change, or if they would be willing to do that themselves and sell you a legal copy of the modified font.

As far as Apple hiding many of the fonts, that may be directly related to the fact Apple doesn't own them. Meaning, the licensing fees to allow full use had possibly expired back in El Capitan and Apple didn't want to renew a full, open license for that many fonts. The cost has to be pretty steep when you're talking about millions of possible users.

Woodpig wrote:

By the way, it's not buggy, it just doesn't work in Ventura (not legally). It works via Creative Cloud in Adobe apps, but not outside of them. And you can't install a different version from anywhere else.

It does work in Ventura. It is a little buggy, but that's all. Many things in Ventura work better after a restart. I posted a screenshot of it.

I don't care about Creative Cloud or Adobe. I don't use those apps, and after what I have seen here in the forums, I would never install any of them. They take things that work fine, or are just a little buggy, and make them impossible.

What you have described is a textbook example. If I have a document that uses Athelas, then it works exactly as it should in Ventura. If I want to install my own copy of Athelas, that works too. It's a little buggy because I have to restart. But after that restart, my duplicate copy of Athelas works perfectly. You are telling me that with Adobe Creative Cloud, all of this is impossible. I don't doubt you in the least.

Woodpig wrote:

By the way, I should point out, Etresoft, that I did not choose to install Ventura - it came already installed on the new computer. Athelas still works with Monterey on my old computer.

And it still works on Ventura. It's a little buggy, as everything in Ventura is. People keep expecting Apple products to work exactly as they did 20 years ago. If that were the case, then Apple would still be as bankrupt as they were 20 years ago. If you want to keep using the Mac, you are simply going to have to adapt. Apple isn't going to adapt to you. This is a one way street.

Any suggestions as to how I can resolve the Adobe Fonts conflict?

This is a user-to-user support forum for Apple products. If you have a problem with Adobe, you'll have to take that up in some Adobe forum. I realize they will simply blame all problems on Apple. That's what they always do.

There is no such thing as a "font conflict". It simply doesn't exist. You have 400 different, identical fonts named "Athelas" on your computer if you want. It simply doesn't matter. You want to use Athelas 118 in one document and Athelas 227 in a different document? OK. No problem in any way.

Certain apps like Font Book may have to create some kind of unique identifier and warn you about it. You may have difficulty differentiating between the triple-digits. Some snarky forum helper might try to suggest using less than 100 Athelas fonts. But there is no technical problem. Any limitations you encounter are limitations designed into the various 3rd party software apps you are using.

Just as Apple is not the same company that it was 20 years ago, neither is Adobe. Adobe got it start in Mac fonts and today they really struggle with both. You are going to have to decide what to do. No one can do it for you. You will either have to use the Mac and use Mac products or use Adobe on Windows.

Woodpig wrote:

I'm not a fan of creative cloud either, or Adobe - which is why I switched to Affinity.

I tried the Affinity apps but didn't like them. They seems like they have all of the features you would expect, but never in the expected place, with the expected name, or with the expected icon. Supposedly, they were all ported from Windows. Perhaps whoever wrote it had never used any of the equivalent old-school Mac apps like PageMaker, FreeHand, Illustrator. I haven't used any Adobe apps since they added the "X" to MacOS, but I learned graphic design and publishing on those old apps. I don't do that work full-time anymore, so I don't want to bother learning something from scratch. I've got Pixelmator Pro, Graphic, and Pages if I need them. Graphic won't be around for much longer however.

So, after a restart, I can see my duplicate copy of Athelas in Pages, but not in any of the Affinity apps.

Then that's a problem for Affinity to solve.