Is there a way to prevent Mail from loading non system fonts?

Question

Level 1

91 points

Is there a way to prevent Mail from loading non system fonts?

For over a year, and a system OS upgrade, Mail has been taking 7 - 10 minutes to load all the thousands of fonts I have on my computer for graphic design. This started with Snow Leopard on my 2009 Mac Pro (10 GB RAM, 2 TB HDD). At first I didn't know why the computer was taking such a long time to finish boot up. So I reformatted the drive--zeroing it out. Then I installed Mavericks and reinstalled everything else. Finally I tried logging the system activity during startup and noticed that something to do with fonts took up the biggest chunk of this time. Because Mavericks loads any programs you leave running at shut down, I saw that if Mail had the fonts window open, the list of fonts would slowly grow, filling up with the many font families I use for my work. I called tech support for my font management utility but they say the fonts are not in the system and and shouldn't affect the system during startup. In the end I gave up and just go drink a few coffees after hitting the start button. It's like going back to the early days 25 years ago.

Can I stop Mail from loading any non-system fonts? I never use anything but the default font.

Mac Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.4), 10 GB RAM, 2 TB drive

Posted on Feb 20, 2015 12:07 PM

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Answer 1

Brett L

Community Specialist

Feb 22, 2015 7:01 AM in response to SchenkerBob

Hey SchenkerBob,

It is possible to disable non-system fonts temporarily for all applications using the Font Book application. This article explains how to do so -

Mac Basics: Font Book - Apple Support

In particular -

Disable and enable specific fonts

In situations where you'd like to prevent a font from being available in applications, but you don't want to completely remove the font from your Mac, you can use Font Book to disable the font.

In Font Book, click "All Fonts" in the Collection column.

Click the name of the font in the Font column.

Choose Disable "Font Name" Family from the Edit menu.

Since it might be problematic to have to disable each font individually, you can create a collection of fonts and disable the collection. See the article for how to create a font collection -

Organize fonts as collections

When working with fonts, you may discover that you use certain fonts frequently, but rarely use others. To make it easier to find the font you are looking for, you can organize your fonts into collections.

From the Font Book File menu, choose New Collection.

Type in a name for the new collection.

Click "All Fonts" in the Collection column.

Drag the fonts that you want from the Font column onto the name of your new collection in the Collection column.

You can then disable collections of fonts -

You can also disable or enable all fonts in a collection: Click the name of the collection in the Collection column, then choose Disable "Collection Name" or EnableCollection Name" " from the Edit menu.

Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.

Happy computing,

Brett L

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Answer 2

SchenkerBob Author

Level 1

91 points

Feb 22, 2015 11:48 AM in response to Brett L

Font Book only shows loaded system fonts--there aren't all that many. I have many many others which are managed by a program called Font Agent Pro which runs the fonts separately. They are not supposed to be seen by the system. But somehow, Mail seems to be loading them. I've been working this way for over 20 years, first using Suitcase, and later Font Reserve and for at least a dozen years, Font Agent. I've never had a problem like this. Then, out of the blue last year (I was then using Leopard on the otherwise same computer as now) the computer started churning away for a good 10-15 minutes after it booted up. During this period, Mail is unresponsive. Eventually everything settles down. At first I wasn't sure what was happening and posted on these forums. I was asked to do a log of boot up activity and that's where I first became aware that fonts were the main activity. I couldn't figure anything out and thought upgrading might cure the issue, so I installed Mavericks. Same difference, only now programs left open at shut down open with boot up and if I left the Mail fonts window open I could see that the computer churning coincided with the font window adding all these fonts that are supposed to only be available to Adobe Illustrator and InDesign which have plugins for my font management software. When the computer stops churning away, the fonts stop loading into Mail and then I can use the program. But this never happened before over all the years I've been working with the same setup and software.

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Answer 3

SchenkerBob Author

Level 1

91 points

Feb 26, 2015 4:24 PM in response to SchenkerBob

Problem solved!! Nothing directly to do with fonts or Mail. My hard drive was beginning to fail. Tests showed it to be OK, and for the most part it seemed OK, except Mail was running slow and taking forever to boot. I decided to try replacing the drive and that did it. Everything is working as it should. Thanks to those whole offered advice.

Bob

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Answer 4

kahjot

Level 4

2,462 points

Feb 26, 2015 6:08 PM in response to SchenkerBob

Glad you figured it out, although a failing drive is nothing to celebrate. You might want to look through this very thorough guide to font management and managers anyway:

http://www.jklstudios.com/misc/osxfonts.html

Maybe Kurt Lang can comment on whether it's a good idea to have both Font Book and another font manager on your system.

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