Foreign Fonts

Hi kpdesigns,

Thanks for the question. You can choose to delete font collections from your Mac if you wish. The following resources will show you how:

OS X Yosemite: Customize font collections
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH18453?viewlocale=en_US

The Fonts window groups similar fonts into collections, such as Fun or Modern. You can add or remove fonts in these collections, or create your own collections.

1. In an app that uses the Fonts window, open the window by choosing Format > Show Fonts, or Format > Font > Show Fonts.

2. Do any of the following:

   • Create a collection: Click Add below the Collection column, then type a name for the collection.

   • Add a font to a collection: Drag a font family or typeface to a collection.

   • Remove a font from a collection: Drag the font out from the Fonts window. The font remains on your Mac, but is no longer available in the Fonts window.

   • Delete a collection: Select it in the list, then click Delete below the Collection column.

   • Mark a font as a favorite: Drag a font from the Typeface column to the Favorites collection in the Collection column. Or select a font, click the Action pop-up menu , then choose Add to Favorites.

For more information about working with fonts, open Font Book.

Format text in documents

Change the font sizes listed in the Fonts window

Mac Basics: Font Book - Apple Support
http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201749

Remove a font with Font Book

To remove a font using Font Book, select All Fonts in the Collection column, select the name of the font in the Font column, then choose File > Remove "Font Name" Family. Font Book will move those font files into the Trash.

System fonts can't be removed.

I hope this information helps ....

- Judy

Spoke too soon. Photoshop still works as expected, but a lot of fonts that are not on OS X's folder still appear in the list of fonts PS displays when I use the text tool. So it's likely reading the fonts from any other Adobe app it can find them in.

The same fonts (plus a couple more) are also in the main Library folder under Application Support / Adobe. I moved all of those out and emptied the embedded Fonts folder in PS CC 2014. And still, all of these Adobe fonts show up in the list:

You'd have to hunt down the duplicated fonts in every Adobe app, move them all out and see if anything still works. If not, then put them back. Besides the root Library folder under Application Support, the same one are duplicated within each of these CC 2014 apps:

Photoshop

Illustrator
Acrobat Pro

After Effects

Bridge

InDesign (twice! for this one, believe it or not, in two separate subfolders)

Media Encoder

Premiere Pro

Okay, more info on the Adobe apps. It installs over a GB of what turns out to be useless fonts in numerous folders. I emptied every single Fonts folder within each application package that had them, and also emptied the same fonts from the /Library/Application Support/Adobe/… folder.

This "fixed" almost all of the apps to show only fonts that are actually active on the system. And something I rather didn't expect, it didn't affect a single app. Not even InDesign, which not only had the same fonts in two separate folder within its application package, but one was also in the "Required" folder. Didn't faze it at all. The app still launched and behaved completely normally.

So in the end, this is how all of the apps which had embedded fonts show their font lists after clearing them out.

Acrobat Pro and Bridge work as expected. (Why did these apps have the same embedded fonts in the first place?)

After Effects, InDesign, Media Encoder and Premiere Pro work as expected and show only the actual active fonts. Premiere Pro works as expected even with its embedded "Required" fonts folder emptied.

Illustrator works as expected, but continues to list Myriad Roman (shown as missing). Also Myriad Pro and an Adobe Asian font of some sort (both available, but nowhere to be found) in its font list.

Photoshop

The bad boy. Continues to show many fonts nowhere to be found. The image here shows all of the fonts (highlighted) that cannot be found anywhere on the drive, which still not only show up in Photoshop's list, but also work. So they are live fonts PS is loading from somewhere on launch. The rest are all of the active fonts I expect to see in all apps.

The few characters that are already shown is just a command line prompt. They don't really mean anything.

You type in csrutil disable and press Enter. You wll be told that System Integrity Protection has been disabled and to reboot.

In the shot here, the author showed all three commands for csrutil and the return results. csrtuil status just tells you if SIP is currently on or off. He then gave the command to disable SIP, followed by the command to enable it so he could capture all three result lines in one screen shot. You would only use the disable argument until you're done removing fonts. Then enter Recovery Mode again to enable SIP.

Many of the foreign fonts are in the System folder, and Font Book won't display those, much less let you remove them. There are tons more foreign fonts in the root Library folder.

Good news is, of the 280 fonts (the files themselves) Yosemite installs, you can remove most of them without affecting how the OS or its apps function. I don't know about you, but I'm neither blind or have very poor vision, so what do I need the Braille fonts on my system for? I can't read any Kanji characters, so why do I need any Asian fonts on my system?

I have a detailed font article you can look over; Font Management in OS X. Section one explains which are the minimum fonts that should be in the /System/Library/Fonts/ folder, and the root /Library/Fonts/ folder.

Or, just compare to this list of the installed fonts on my Mac and make yours the same. Copy all fonts to another location first. Then you can activate any of those you remove with your font manager the same as any other font. They don't need to go back into the folders they came from.

System folder:

Apple Color Emoji.ttf

AppleSDGothicNeo-Bold.otf

AppleSDGothicNeo-Regular.otf

Courier.dfont

Geneva.dfont

Helvetica.dfont

HelveticaNeue.dfont

HelveticaNeueDeskInterface.ttc

Keyboard.ttf

LastResort.ttf

LucidaGrande.ttc

Menlo.ttc

Monaco.dfont

Symbol.ttf

Times.dfont

ZapfDingbats.ttf (Not really necessary. I don't have this one installed.)

Library folder (root, not your user account):

AppleGothic.ttf

Arial Black.ttf

Arial Bold Italic.ttf

Arial Bold.ttf

Arial Italic.ttf

Arial Narrow Bold Italic.ttf

Arial Narrow Bold.ttf

Arial Narrow Italic.ttf

Arial Narrow.ttf

Arial Rounded Bold.ttf

Arial.ttf

Comic Sans MS Bold.ttf

Comic Sans MS.ttf

Georgia Bold Italic.ttf

Georgia Bold.ttf

Georgia Italic.ttf

Georgia.ttf

Impact.ttf

Tahoma Bold.ttf

Tahoma.ttf

Times New Roman Bold Italic.ttf

Times New Roman Bold.ttf

Times New Roman Italic.ttf

Times New Roman.ttf

Trebuchet MS Bold Italic.ttf

Trebuchet MS Bold.ttf

Trebuchet MS Italic.ttf

Trebuchet MS.ttf

Verdana Bold Italic.ttf

Verdana Bold.ttf

Verdana Italic.ttf

Verdana.ttf

Webdings.ttf

Wingdings 2.ttf

Wingdings 3.ttf

Wingdings.ttf

I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.

The Adobe apps install those fonts and only the Adobe apps see them because of where they're located. They're also all over the place. They're repeated over and over for each Adobe app and are buried within each application package for Photoshop, Illustrator, Bridge, etc. No idea why.

For Photoshop, you would right click on the app itself and choose "Show Package Contents". Then drill down through:

/Contents/Required/PDFL/Resource/Fonts

There will be 27 .otf fonts and two Windows formatted Type 1 PostScript fonts (only the Adobe apps can read Windows PS 1 fonts within OS X, no version of the Mac OS can, or ever has been able to).

Be very careful removing these fonts. I've never tested to see if removing any of them will cause the app you pull them out of to fail to launch.

Easy enough to test. I just now moved all of the .otf fonts out of the embedded fonts folder for Photoshop, and it came up the same as always. No errors, no funny menus. I would bet the only fonts it cares about in its "Required" folder are the two PS1 fonts.

This is really strange. I removed and deleted every single Arabic, Hebrew and otherwise font from every location on the drive. I dismounted another physical drive the same fonts I know would be on (I have the same Adobe apps installed under a Yosemite partition). I even disconnected my Mac from the Internet. The same fonts keep appearing in every Adobe app. Not just show up, actually work. So there are actual fonts somewhere.

I also searched the entire drive with EasyFind, allowing it to search in all application packages and hidden folders. Nothing.

James Garnham asked the same question on Adobe's forums, trying to find out how to remove all of these "invisible" Adobe fonts to get them out of his lists. No one has answered it, not even the Adobe specialists. There's nothing on the Internet in general I can find out about these fonts or their locations.

Can't even begin to guess why Adobe is protecting these fonts to the hilt. I don't need them, and I would imagine most other people don't want, or need them, either.

Monolingual removes unused foreign language files, not fonts.

Since I can't find any .otf or .ttf fonts anywhere on the drive for these "hidden" items, then they have to be compressed in another file the Adobe apps read and load when launched.

Hi Kurt

I'm using CC 2015 most up to date version.

I've just tried to moved the superflous fonts out of the InDesign > Resources > Required > Fonts folder and into a folder on my desktop. Much to my surprise instead of moving the fonts, they remain in the original folder and the "moved" fonts are aliases. It seems that Adobe are protecting these fonts and make it difficult to move / get rid of them.

I presume there won't be any font conflict between the Minion and Myriad fonts installed by CC and the Minion and Myriad fonts I use dayly that I have placed in my Home > Libary > Fonts folder?

Just hold down the Command key so it turns into a move instead of creating a bunch of aliases.

I presume there won't be any font conflict between the Minion and Myriad fonts installed by CC and the Minion and Myriad fonts I use dayly that I have placed in my Home > Libary > Fonts folder?

There shouldn't be. Only the Adobe apps know those versions exist, the rest of the system doesn't. You'll notice when you actually remove them, they don't appear in the lists anymore. So only is you activate a Minion or Myriad set will they appear again, and you know that's the font set you're actually using.

Why Adobe insists on installing these "required" fonts, I don't know. They clearly aren't required as the apps will run just fine without them. Photoshop continues to be the very weird one, though. I have not for the life of me been able to figure out where it's hiding the fonts you see in its list.

Hi Kurt

Thank you.

Will you be updating your Font Management in OS X article to take into account the new San Francisco font? Can we finally use postscript or opentype Helvetica and Helvetica Neue again? Thanks

Just put up the new version yesterday. Refresh your browser if it's still showing an older page.

Oops! And I just saw a big boo-boo I need to fix in the minimum font list. HelveticaNeue.dfont should be in there.