problem with font book collections

Let we guess: you upgraded all the way to Sierra 10.12.4?

I've got similar problems with font book collections, particularly in the Favorites collection. The two, prior, point releases were OK for me, but 10.12.4 immediately caused my problems on updating in early April, 2017. I've gone back to 10.12.3, and all is well again. This, therefore, seems to be a bug in the current version of the OS. I've advised Apple, as Chiara has done in another thread.

I would encourage everyone, with these font collection problems in Sierra 10.12.4, to send feedback to Apple at:

https://www.apple.com/feedback/macos.html

Let's see if Apple can correct this quickly in the next point release, as the Font Book affects so my other Apple and third-party apps on a system wide basis! The designers, who work with hundreds of fonts, are really pulling their hair out.

Thanks.

How to test an issue in another user account on your Mac - Apple Support

Here is a video that does a better job of explaining the issue than words.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5ajo24f26k7qgnv/font%20book%20probs.mov?dl=0

Symptoms:

• Drag font to collection
• Whatever is in the collection gets zeroed out
• Close Font Book
• Open Font Book and fonts moved to collection appear

Also: I have noticed issues with search, like.. You cant click in the input field. AND! Just to make sure the problem is consistent. I just upgraded another mac to 10.12.4 and broke Font Book on that machine too. Before 10.12.4 everything worked as expected. Post upgrade? Splat! again!

after i upgraded to Sierra, this started happening to me also. i did find something that works (but is very time consuming). i add a font to a collection, (or two at the same time), then check the collection window, which is blank. i quit out of font book, then (on advice of somebody who said this) i restart font book holding down the shift key. check the font collection and the recently added ones (and previous ones) are there. i have to do this every time i add a font to a collection, but at least it's working.

just to be on the safe side, first start with a small collection, because i don't know if this will erase your whole collection when you add a new one.... i haven't been brave enough to try that yet!

Glad I found this thread. After doing a clean install of Sierra (10.12.4) I have been struggling to find a solution to the "cant add fonts to collection" problem. Glad I am not alone. How is it possible it's so broken? Sent Apple a message about this too!

FYI: After a clean install of 10.12.4 Font Book Collections and Libraries are fundamentally broken from my experience. Creating new user accounts does nothing. Thats the puzzling part to me. How can one of the most important parts of the OS be so badly broken all of a sudden and why are there not more reports about this I wonder?

Hi Chris. You are so right! How did this bug in Sierra get missed in quality assurance? It affects so many apps — Apple and third party!

For several days I thought this only affected me, as I had not found any complaints with 10.12.4 and font collections. But now they are finally showing up. The Apple Support Communities sure are a great resource, even when it's an OS bug, and there's no immediate solution.

Thanks for informing Apple.

Wow! Search too? I can't replicate that because I'm totally back in 10.12.3, which as you say is totally stable.

My Mac Mini was never updated to .4, and works fine with Font Book. I made a huge error, I suppose, in updating my Mac Book Pro to .4 before testing it in the Mini. ... Lesson learned!

Sorry english translation done with google translate. I also have the same problem fonts do not load into new libraries. I did report to Apple, it is definitely a bug in version 10.12.4. I hope they solve it as soon as you can not work under these conditions.

Font Book seems to be having a fair number of problems in Sierra. There are at least three similar topics in just the past couple of days noting the same issues.

I did some testing of my own on a clean install of Sierra, 10.12.4 on an erased drive and got the same results. The italicized text is what I usually post when Font Book is doing things like not showing fonts, not allowing you to add them, etc. Usually, it works.

Typically, these types of issues in Font Book means its database is damaged. Close Font Book. Open the Preferences folder in your user account and put these two items in the trash.

com.apple.FontBook.plist

com.apple.FontRegistry.user.plist

Note that you may not find both. com.apple.FontBook.plist keeps track of Font Book's general preferences and activated fonts, whether as a standard or library collection. com.apple.FontRegistry.user.plist keeps track of deactivated fonts.

When testing FB in Sierra, I first created collection and a library set to see what would list under All Fonts. I couldn't even add anything to the library. FB would immediately crash. So I deleted the two .plist files and tried again. Now it behaved correctly. Or I should say, I could at least add fonts to both the collection and library sets without having FB take a dirt nap.

Fonts I added to a collection showed there and under All Fonts. But the ones I put in a library would only show in its own set. It wasn't until I quit FB and relaunched it that any fonts added to a library set would also appear under All Fonts.

i deleted these two com.apple files; it still didn't work correctly. even after a restart. oh well. Praying that Apple fixes this problem and SOON! because i just LOVE Font Book ! (when it's working properly)

I've upgraded to 10.12.5 and the problem was solved temporarily, but recently reappeared. Somehow all of my collections were actually cleared out (no recovery upon relaunch) the last time I was having problems, and I was about 2/3 of the way through re-classifying my 1,500+ fonts when Font Book stopped working again. I don't want to lose all of my work a second time!

Thank you for the link! i sent them a message. hopefully a lot more folks will so do so that this problem gets fixed!

10.12.5 solves the font book problem, although it's undocumented. I guess if you don't acknowledge the problem it does't officially exist?

Thank You! I've upgraded to 10.12.5 and the problem is solved!