Fonts work on reboot, then stop after a few minutes

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Level 1

4 points

Fonts work on reboot, then stop after a few minutes

Weird issue on 2 Mac's running Monterey 12.6.7

Fonts started coming up as question marks in boxes in Chrome and Mail.

Upon reboot, everything works fine for a few minutes, then the problem returns.

Adobe Creative Cloud and Universal Type Client are the only programs that launch at startup, and I tried disabling both, and the problem still comes back a few minutes after a reboot.

Font Book seems to think all the fonts are fine, but several display question mark boxes in Font Book.

I tried deleting all the fonts I could delete

Tried 'File/Restore Standard Fonts' in Font Book

Tried

sudo atsutil databases -remove

Tied

sudo diskutil repairPermissions /

But it returns "diskutil: did not recognize verb "repairPermissions"

Tried

atsutil server -shutdown

and

atsutil server -ping

Every idea the internet has to offer, and no matter what, after a reboot, it works for a few minutes, then reverts back.

Any new ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Mac Pro, macOS 10.14

Posted on Aug 16, 2023 12:49 PM

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Answer 1

Dorain1

Community Specialist

Aug 17, 2023 11:11 AM in response to cbanakis

Thank you for reaching out and posting in Apple Support Communities and sharing the steps you have already tried for the behavior you are seeing with the fonts.

We recommend trying to reboot your Mac in safe mode and test to see if this behavior continues with the fonts while in safe mode. It's expected behavior for your Mac to startup slower than normal. After testing in safe mode, restart to return to normal mode and test the fonts again. To learn more about safe mode, see Start up your Mac in safe mode - Apple Support and follow the steps according to the Mac processor installed.

After trying safe mode, if you still see this behavior with the fonts, we recommend reaching out to Apple Support. You can reach them by going to Get Support.

Good luck!

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Answer 2

Kurt Lang

Level 9

57,098 points

Aug 17, 2023 11:36 AM in response to cbanakis

It will do you no good to start into safe mode to test your fonts. The OS only allows a very small and specific set of OS installed fonts to load in safe mode. Any attempt to activate third party fonts will be blocked.

Which fonts are you trying to activate? Please give specific names and where they were acquired.

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Fonts work on reboot, then stop after a few minutes

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