I want to either delete or disable a lot of the fonts in my Font Book. However, I know the system needs certain fonts and I don't want to jeopardize the system in any way. The question is, are the system fonts shown in Font Book? If not then I can safely delete/disable any fonts I don't use I assume.
Gary
Mac Pro, OS X Mavericks (10.9.5), 3-1TB HDs, 2-2TB HDs, NEC PA271W
Font Book doesn't show the all of the system fonts in its lists. For the ones that do show, you can't delete them from FB's interface. You can highlight a system font, choose to delete it, and FB won't give you any kind of message that the font can't be removed. But FB won't delete it, either.
If you want to get your system down to a minimum number of required fonts, follow the outline for your version of OS X in Font Management in OS X.
I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.
Thank you for this Kurt. A lot of work on your part and much appreciated. I've bookmarked this "Font Management in OS X" as a referral site. As far as Mavericks is concerned, as long as I don't touch these fonts I should be OK, is that correct?
Apple Color Emoji.ttf
AppleSDGothicNeo-Bold.otf
AppleSDGothicNeo-Regular.otf
Courier.dfont
Geneva.dfont
Helvetica.dfont
HelveticaNeue.dfont
HelveticaNeueDeskUI.ttc
Keyboard.ttf
LastResort.ttf
LucidaGrande.ttc
Menlo.ttc
Monaco.dfont
Symbol.ttf
Times.dfont
I have a lot of fonts that I will likely never use. Foreign languages, symbols etc., so I'd like to clean house a bit if possible. Most, if not all of these fonts were obviously installed with Font Book, since I would never have done so myself. I understand that clearing out unused fonts is a big part of maintaining the Mac for a more streamlined atmosphere when running apps that offer fonts -- Photoshop, Lightroom, Illustrator, Word etc., so I think this will be a help for my workflow.
Thanks again Kurt.
Gary
That is the correct minimal font list for Mavericks in the /System/Library/Fonts/ folder. Absolutely be sure to look further down in that same first section for fonts that should not be removed from the root /Library/Fonts/ folder.
Most, if not all of these fonts were obviously installed with Font Book…
Actually, they're installed with OS X in general. But yes, there are many that you don't need. Such as any of the Asian fonts. I can't read any type of Kanji characters, so why should I leave them? My eyesight is good, so what do I need any of the Braille fonts for?
I do copy all of the fonts OS X installs to another drive first so I can activate them with my font manager later if I do need them for some rare reason.
If you continue to use Font Book after manually removing fonts you don't need, you must reset it. Which essentially is just restarting in Safe Mode, then restarting again normally.
Thanks again, very good advice. One more question - in your opinion, what's the best Font Manager other than Font Book? I'd like to get a better handle on this if possible and perhaps help some of my apps operate more efficiently.
Gary
In my opinion, the only two worth considering are Suitcase Fusion, or FontExplorerX Pro.
Sorry, I should have included this in my former question Do you believe either of those Font Manager suggestions would do a better/more complete job than Font Book?
By far. The first thing I do on any Mac I set up is remove many apps OS X installs that I know I'll never use. Font Book is on that list.
Font Book is a light use font manager that works well for the typical home user who doesn't add or remove fonts very often. It doesn't handle corrupt fonts well. They tend to corrupt Font Book's database. When that happens, you run into issues like activating fonts that then don't show up in any or some apps. You can't turn fonts on or off, etc.
Suitcase Fusion and FontExplorerX Pro are much more heavy duty font managers that can handle thousands of fonts without choking. In testing, I've had as many as 14,000 fonts open at once in Suitcase (just to see if I could open every single font I own). Naturally, the system moved kind of slow, even with 16 GB or RAM installed, and font lists were silly long to look through, but it worked.
Please stay tuned Kurt. I feel another question coming on concerning the install of Suitcase and possible conflicts with Font Book, but I have to get work finished, so I'll add to this thread later.
Gary
Hello again,
Well, looking back on my previous post, I guess I actually did ask the question, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. I'm sure there's a simple answer to this question, but I am concerned about the possibility of a conflict between Font Book and Suitcase. I hope that would not be the case, since I am considering the purchase of Suitcase. Somehow it seems to offer more than FontExplorerX Pro, but since have experience with neither of these apps I cannot be sure of that. Although the latter is more affordable, that is not my prime criteria. Any other words of advice would be greatly appreciated.
Gary
As noted in my article, the issue with multiple font managers on the system is that, let's say as an example you have the same font activated in both apps. You then disable it in one app. Going back to your apps, the font is still available. Why? The answer is the other font manager is still holding it open.
A much bigger issue, particularly with Font Book, is even if you don't use it ever again, it will still fight against your new font manager because its database tells the OS what fonts it thinks are enabled or disabled. This will cause your third party font manager problems. If you do decide to purchase Suitcase or FEX, Font Book must go.
Suitcase is easier to use, but FEX has more enable/disable options. Though I've never had a reason to wish I used FEX. The FEX interface is more complex, which is my only real gripe against it. I get it (I've been dealing with fonts for decades), but for new or inexperienced users, it can be rather confusing.
Absolutely correct Kurt, you do get it. Problem is, I don't, yet(I guess that's rather obvious). Therefore my next question would be, when would I need to zap Font Book, before or after I install Suitcase? Does the order of those two procedures matter? Does Suitcase immediately recognize and take over the Font(library) upon installation? I'm sure the answers to most of those questions might be found on their website, but thought I would ask here first. Also, how much of a learning curve is involved with the initial implementation of Suitcase? I'm not what you might refer to as a heavy user of a lot of fonts. I simply want to make sure the font library is basically "lean and mean", and not in any way an impairment to system performance.
Gary
Hello Garnick,
It technically doesn't matter, but I would remove Font Book before installing your new font manager. See the bottom of section 6 in my article for the full instructions for removing Font Book, clearing its database, and clearing all current font cache data.
Yes. Suitcase will automatically add all fonts in the System and root Library folders to its list. You don't need to do anything special. It's ready to go from there. Up to you, but the first thing I'd do in Suitcase's preferences is to turn off the Vault. Change it to activate fonts 'in place".
To me, "heavy use" is having to manage numerous sets of client fonts each day, turning them on and off as required for each project. You can of course do this with Font Book, but the more fonts you have to handle, the more likely it is to choke.
By following the minimum font lists in my article, that's as lean 'n' mean as you can get the OS without crippling the OS X supplied apps, or making the web unusable. Be sure to pay close attention to both parts of section one. The first part is the minimum list for the System folder, and the second is the minimum list for the root Library folder.
Kurt Lang wrote:
That is the correct minimal font list for Mavericks in the /System/Library/Fonts/ folder. Absolutely be sure to look further down in that same first section for fonts that should not be removed from the root /Library/Fonts/ folder.
…there are many that you don't need. Such as any of the Asian fonts. I can't read any type of Kanji characters, so why should I leave them? My eyesight is good, so what do I need any of the Braille fonts for?
I also trim my system font folder, following your guide (thanks!), and recently encountered a minor "gotcha" with my slimmed-down system font group. I got an error message when launching DxO Optics Pro that a system font used by the application was missing. Not very helpful because it gave no indication of WHAT font was missing. I e-mailed tech support and got a quick reply: "One of the main fonts used in Optics Pro is named "Hiragino Kaku Gothic ProN". This is an OS X system font that should never be removed or disabled. If you still have this font on your system, you should re-enable it. Otherwise, you can recover the font by reinstalling OS X."
Font Explorer Pro shows the font name "Hiragino Kaku Gothic ProN" but in the Finder, what you see is this: ヒラギノ角ゴ ProN W3.otf, which made for a bit of confusion, but I did sort it out and activate it.
I would have expected the Kaku and Mincho fonts to be very safe to remove. Go figure. DxO Optics Pro seemed to function OK when the font was missing, however.
Thank you again Kurt, and kahjot as well for the heads up concerning this font "Hiragino Kaku Gothic ProN". As with you, I would have deleted it, not in any way expecting it to have been used by any app. In some instances it almost becomes a matter of disable, until you're satisfied that it might be OK to actually delete. However, being an amateur at the font game, I speak only from a point of logic(possibly). Not at all certain about that either I'm afraid. I am certainly becoming educated at a fast pace, thanks to you two gentlemen. And I must say especially Kurt, for all of the work you have put into the very informative article on this matter. I'm almost committed to purchasing Suitcase and bidding a not so fond farewell to Font Book. Of course before all of that I will be reading the PDFs from the Suitcase site and hopefully building confidence that I can indeed manage fonts more efficiently with the help of Suitcase. Be aware though, I will probably be back and renewing this thread with more irritating questions.
Again, thank you both.
Gary
I got an error message when launching DxO Optics Pro that a system font used by the application was missing. Not very helpful because it gave no indication of WHAT font was missing. I e-mailed tech support and got a quick reply: "One of the main fonts used in Optics Pro is named "Hiragino Kaku Gothic ProN". This is an OS X system font that should never be removed or disabled…"
Very bizarre they would need a font like that for their software to operate. But then, that's why my article also has the section of known issues with disabled fonts. Like this part:
If you have Times open but not Symbol, Grapher will launch but then erroneously tell you there is a font conflict, when in reality it's just that Symbol is missing.
The error message Grapher tosses out tells you nothing about what's really wrong. AppleGothic has virtually no use other than to display Korean text in some of Apple's license agreements. But if you don't have it active, those apps won't work. Or in the case of the OS X Tiger install disk, it won't even open on the desktop.
I would have expected the Kaku and Mincho fonts to be very safe to remove. Go figure. DxO Optics Pro seemed to function OK when the font was missing, however.
In 99.99999% of cases, it would be. But as mentioned, that's a very odd font to require for a software package to work. Something to add to the "exceptions" section. Thanks much for the info!
Where do System Fonts reside?
