Why are there 1120 "system" fonts that can NOT be disabled in OS Ventura?

Yes, I agree. I've been in electronic prepress for over 40 years. Before there was such a thing as Aldus Pagemaker, Adobe Photoshop, etc. I have something like 14,000 fonts. Maybe more.

All of those fonts are there because macOS is a multi-national OS. But because Apple only has one installer for everyone, no matter which country you're in, or what you're language is, all of the fonts needed for every language have to be included in the installer.

What's annoying about Ventura is before this OS, you could disable the fonts in the /System/Library/Fonts/Supplemental folder with pretty much any decent third party font manger. They are after all, supplemental, not critical to the operation of the OS. But Apple decided to make them untouchable.

You'll notice in at least the last four releases of macOS, all of Apple's OS supplied apps, and their purchased apps (Logic, Final Cut, etc.) automatically hide the fonts not related to your language/region. Even in Font Book. What they want vendors to do is use the API that hides these same fonts. The Affinity suite of apps do this. I read somewhere (rumor?) that eventually Apple wants to hide these fonts from every app, whether the vendor uses the current API or not.

The bad news for advertising agencies and prepress is, what if you need those fonts for multi-language projects? If they're hidden, though still active, how do you get at them? And it may not be possible to activate third party foreign language fonts as they may conflict with the Apple supplied fonts you can't see in your font lists.

It's kind of a mess. You'd like to turn most of these fonts off, and turn them on only when you need them. As we've done for decades. I understand hiding them is a good option for most users as they never need to use the glut of fonts Apple hides in their apps, and other third party apps also hide (Affinity). But that doesn't mean it works for everyone.

cblack0303 wrote:

In the article on Apple’s site there’s a link that lists all the system fonts in Ventura. I copied the list, pasted in in Excel. Each font was in its own cell in one column. Total number of rows was 1120.

Also, in that article it say that you cannot disable any of the system fonts in Ventura.

I meant where in an app. Before Ventura, there were lots of complaints from people using 3rd party apps. These apps were showing hundreds of fonts because the apps weren't using any of Apple's software to organize apps by category, language, or use. This was 100% a problem with those apps. But they refused to make any changes. So Apple made a change that would hide most of those fonts in those apps.

That Apple Support site lists system fonts, downloadable fonts, and document support fonts. There 1427 in total. But many are just downloadable and aren't actually installed by default. Many are individual fonts of a larger typeface. So when it lists 12 Proxima Nova fonts, that's really just one.

The list also includes foreign language fonts and document support fonts. The fix I mentioned above will prevent the document support fonts from showing in any app. That's several hundred fonts. You may still see lots of foreign language fonts, depending on whether or not your 3rd party app bothers to filter them or not.

A relatively small number of these fonts are officially "system fonts" that cannot be disabled. You can still create font categories to exclude those fonts if you want, but few 3rd party apps support those font categories.

I'm using Affinity Photo and Designer, lets me show only the fonts I want show in a specific collection I setup in Font Book. No more trolling thousands of fonts. I'm running Sanoma.

No, they are not.

There were two changes in Ventura. First, Apple changed the “availableFonts” so that it no longer returns supplemental fonts. Next, Apple changed the enable/disable methods such that they no longer work on supplemental fonts.

And I have no reason at all to disbelieve your account of what Apple has done in Ventura's background. I'm just saying I've tested this over the past couple of days, and some apps still show all of the Supplemental fonts no matter what you try to do.

The Typeface font manager just flat out tells you the Supplemental fonts cannot be disabled. FontBase and RightFont both let you add the Supplemental fonts to their interface, and both act as if they're disabling the fonts when you choose to do that. But in both cases, the fonts are still active. If they were truly disabled/inactive, then they wouldn't continue to list as available in the Adobe apps. But you already know that as you plainly stated, "Apple changed the enable/disable methods such that they no longer work on supplemental fonts."

Overall, though (of those apps I have on my Mac I can test with), almost all of them now hide the same fonts Apple does. Including the new free version of Outlook.

Of the apps I could directly test, without randomly downloading other apps that present a font list, only these still insist on listing every single font in the System folder:

Adobe Photoshop (and I presume the rest of the CC suite)

Master PDF Editor

SoftMaker Office

Of those, SoftMaker Office is the oddball. It has a bad habit of directly reading the Fonts folders instead of listing fonts flagged as available by the system. The good news there is the 2024 suite is in beta and they've made some very good, and necessary changes. One is the suite never used to pay attention to fonts you activated in place. They had to be in a Fonts folder for the apps to recognize them at all. I noted this issue as something they really needed to address, and darned if they didn't have it implemented in the very next beta release.

And like the MS Office suite, you had to shut down and relaunch the apps for them to even see a font you activated if the app was already running. The beta now recognizes newly activated fonts immediately. Though like MS Office, it still doesn't recognize when you've disabled a font when the app is running - sort of. It does the same thing MS Office has done for decades. It knows the font is disabled, but still shows the font name in the list instead of clearing it. You still have to shut the app down and relaunch it for the disabled font to disappear.

They also added a button to the preferences:

Before, you had to go through the list and uncheck every single system font you didn't want the apps to show. Like all of the Noto fonts, Saravek, etc. Now you just turn on the new check box below the list and boom!, all of the same system fonts Apple hides are no longer visible. All good except they need to fix a bug where if that box is checked, then any third party fonts you enable, no matter what method used, never show up in the font list. Otherwise, they now have that nuisance covered.

This change certainly seems to have reduced the frequency of this kinds of posts. Curiously, it did not eliminate them. But I’m still skeptical. The only font listing that the OP seems to be complaining about is the list on a web site. Sorry, but that just doesn’t count.

I have to admit I don't what web site list you're referring to. I went back through the OP's posts and don't see a reference.

As far as Adobe goes, they are clearly the holdout. You know they have the expertise to easily enable the same API's as anyone else, but seem to be deliberately ignoring it. Couldn't tell you why, other than the guess I threw out earlier.

Give this a try: boot into Safe Mode according to How to use safe mode on your Mac and test to see if the problem persists. Reboot normally and test again.

NOTE 1: Safe Mode boot can take up to 3 - 5 minutes as it's doing the following; 

• Verifies your startup disk and attempts to repair directory issues, if needed

• Loads only required kernel extensions (prevents 3rd party kernel/extensions from loading)

• Prevents Startup Items and Login Items from opening automatically

• Disables user-installed fonts 

• Deletes font caches, kernel cache, and other system cache files

NOTE 2: if you have a wireless keyboard with rechargeable batteries connect it with its charging cable before booting into Safe Mode. This makes it act as a wired keyboard as will insure a successful boot into Safe Mode.

Have you tried adding fonts to the Favorites category in Font Book and then select them from the Favorites section when you access fonts from the app? Like with this text editor, Bean:

Some apps just list the favorites at the top of the long menu.

Hi a brody,

Yes, I tested that font manager, along with quite a few others. It's free, and that's about all it has going for it.

Like all other third party font managers, it can disable the Supplemental fonts in Monterey and earlier, but not Ventura. You can go through the motions of adding those fonts and choosing to disable them, but nothing actually happens. They're still all active.

Kurt Lang wrote:

Like all other third party font managers, it can disable the Supplemental fonts in Monterey and earlier, but not Ventura. You can go through the motions of adding those fonts and choosing to disable them, but nothing actually happens. They're still all active.

No, they are not.

There were two changes in Ventura. First, Apple changed the “availableFonts” so that it no longer returns supplemental fonts. Next, Apple changed the enable/disable methods such that they no longer work on supplemental fonts.

This change certainly seems to have reduced the frequency of this kinds of posts. Curiously, it did not eliminate them. But I’m still skeptical. The only font listing that the OP seems to be complaining about is the list on a web site. Sorry, but that just doesn’t count.

boxready wrote:

True. I'm so exhausted trying to continually scroll the entire font list trying to find my preferred fonts. All my jobs take longer, I literally need more 5 minute breaks just from the stress. I use to be able to use an App called "FONT CLEANER" but it no longer works in OS Sonoma.

You'll have to redirect your complaints to those apps that display those fonts. This was a big problem, but then Apple committed an egregious violation - they met people halfway. Apple fixed the bug that caused those supplemental fonts to be displayed in most cases.

As Kurt describes, it is still possible for 3rd party apps to do something really off the wall and list all these fonts. But this is no longer the case of apps using Apple's most basic, easy to use font listing API. Apple fixed that. The only way for apps to display all of these fonts if for them to go out of their way to find them and list them.

Gone are the days when we had 7 system fonts. That was the 1980s and 1990s. TrueType turned the world upside down, and made 100s of fonts. My advice for those who are overwhelmed, create a template Word, Excel, or whatever other application you need to pick your font with, with just the font in a single text line for each text line that you want. Then copy/paste it into the document you want. The font will be retained, and you don't have to pick from a forever list, or a categorized listing of fonts.

TImes or Times New Roman - if you like having ligatures on your text but don't want too much spacing between the characters

Geneva - if you prefer no ligatures.

Monaco - for mono-spaced fonts to be used where layout is a bear.

Signpainter - for close to cursive for signatures

Palatino or Garamond can be fancier and wider spacing than Times

That's all you need for most, unless you get a client who wants a very specific font.

Starting with Ventura, Apple has put the fonts in the System folder completely off limits. You can't disable any of them.

https://fontba.se/updates sounds like a great software which could help. It is up to date. Has anyone tried it?