I got so fed up of Font Book I download another Font Management software. What I'd like to know is will Font Book still be running in the background as well as the new font software? One of the reasons why I was using Font Book was to deactivate all my fonts (2,700) so my Mac would run faster. So if it is still running this kind of defeats the object. And it won't let me delete it.
iMac 3.06GHz, G4 Powerbook, Mac OS X (10.6.4), iPhone 4, iPod Video
I suggest you to look at this article. It may help you.
As is 'In Mac OS X 10.7 Font Book cannot be modified because it is required by Mac OS X.' 😉
Lion ready:
I've downloaded Linotype FontExplorer X which seems to be working fine. And I am running Lion. I think I might try the first suggestion, but that depends if I can actually get Font Book to function. I get the spinning wheel all the time. I managed to turn off all the fonts the other night, but since then it won't let me do anything. I just wish I could delete it!
So I've opened Font Book and it's just hanging. After a few minutes I managed to select all, but then it quit. I can't seem to do anything. I was able to deactivate all the fonts earlier in the week, but now most of the fonts have reactivated. I thought I could just delete all the fonts, but like I say I can't do anything. Any ideas?
FEX won't work right until you get Font Book off the drive. You don't need to deactivate your fonts with it first.
As you know, the OS states "Font Book can't be modified or deleted because it's required by Mac OS X" when you try to delete it. Which is baloney. It's just a font manager.
Actually, it says the same thing about any app you try to delete from the Applications folder. So, Chess is required by OS X? Umm, I don't think so.
To get rid of Font Book in Lion:
1) First open the preferences for Font Book and turn off the check box for "Alert me if system fonts change". Close the preferences and then shut down Font Book.
2) Open the Terminal application in the Utilities folder. Copy the following line.
sudo rm -R /Applications/Font\ Book.app
Paste it into Terminal. Press Enter. You will be asked for your admin password. Type it in (Terminal does not return on screen what you're typing for a password) and press Enter. Politely wave bye-bye to Font Book. 😉
3) Restart into a Safe Mode boot and then back again normally to clear Font Book's orphaned database from the drive.
Yes! Thank you.
You're welcome. 🙂
i use Terminal often but only for simple stuff... so can you please explain what that command does specifically? does it just allow you to delete it? cause there are other ways i could do that. or is the command to untether Font Book from the OS, so it can be replaced with an alternative?
it would be nice to know how to do the latter option—so I can reverse it if/when Apple ever works out the bugs.
cheers!
Yes, deleting the Font Book app is all it does. You can easily replicate it by opening Terminal and entering:
sudo rm -r
Put a space after the -r, then drag and drop Font Book into Terminal. The path and its name will fill in for you the same as above. For this particular Unix command, it doesn't matter if the -r is upper or lower case.
As with deleting any item from the drive, you can't reverse it without returning the item to the drive. So if you think you may ever want to put Font Book back, copy the app to an external drive, first. All other components it relies on will still be on the drive. They'll just all be inert without the main app.
If you're wondering what the command means:
sudo (Super User DO). You're giving yourself temporary root privileges. Necessary in Terminal for this particular removal since your admin account doesn't have great enough permissions to delete the app.
rm (remove)
-r Since it's an application package, there are more files within what you see as only one item on the desktop. If you didn't include this switch, which tells rm to remove any nested items, the command to delete Font Book would fail since it can't remove the top level item if it doesn't have permission to also remove the nested items.
Or you can skip Terminal entirely and remove Font Book from the desktop. Highlight Font Book and press Command+I, or choose Get Info from the menus (same thing). Click on the lock at the lower right and enter your admin password so you can alter the permissions. Change all of them to Read & Write. Close Get Info. You can now delete Font Book without the OS saying you can't.
Deactivating Font Book
