Font Book automatically activates deactivated fonts

I've got a whole load of fonts in my (hard disk)>Library>Fonts folder, most of which I deactivated in Font Book as I use them very rarely.
But every time I reboot my Mac, Font Book reactivates all the fonts, which is a right royal pain in the backside!
Please can anyone suggest the best way to stop it doing this?
Blue Dalmation iMac Mac OS X (10.4.5) 600mHz processor, 1Gb RAM

Robin --
The fonts in your HD>Library>Fonts folder are put there by the System.
(Unless you purposefully put others in that location.)
There are several that have to be there for your computer to work well.
They are:
Courier.dfont
Geneva.dfont
Helvetica.dfont
Keyboard.dfont
LastResort.dfont
LucidaGrande.dfont
Monaco.dfont
I learned from terrible experience, that it's an excellent idea to leave
the System Fonts alone. There are some you can fool with, but I wouldn't do it again if my life depended on it. Fonts in the Users>Library>Fonts can be fooled with, but not the System fonts.
Here's a great FAQ on fonts in OS X
that should help you out.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=607630&#607630

Similar Messages

Font book not disabling / deactivating fonts

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Why don't my applications just reflect the list of fonts I have enabled in Font Book?
Possibly related: After I upgraded from Tiger to Leopard, all of my fonts were enabled. I subsequently went into Font Book and disabled most of them (which is how I had things in Tiger).

I posted this below, but never had any replies or answers, I have since spoke to someone at the apple store who says:
I should not have them in my user/library/fonts, so now I only have them in HD/library/fonts.
My font book even after being cleared out still thinks and shows my old font history.
Last night my fonts were showing in Illustrator/PS/Indesign but now only shows a basic selection.
Was also told that I should not be running CS2 on my intel based MacBook Pro yet CS3 is not yet ready for Leopard.
I am just finding that my new MacBook Pro whilst fast and sexy seems to have moved away from the logic of old, maybe I am stuck in the past but my working day is greatly increase and eaten into due to clashing software and font problems.
Hi,
I recently got a Mac Book Pro with Leopard and transferred all my Files etc across when doing this I copied my Fonts from my Old G4 to my Mac book Pro and it does not recognise them and will not load them into Font Book, it always says bad font detected or will not validate them!
Obviously this is either a major oversight by myself or apples they work fine on 0S9 and on OSX but not with Leopard, can anyone help as these fonts cost alot of money!
I have also now been to a friend who is still on 0S X and copied them from my OS 9 G4 to a CD then tried them on his machine and hey presto they worked, so I then got him to copy them to a CD thinking I would then be able to make the step up again, but no I still can not access my fonts, Im getting stressed now because I am wasting time and energy on forums and asking friends and trying things, I have a deadline for a Design/Website which relies on this Font and can not get the fonts to work, Macs are meant to be a designers best friend??? I m really having trouble finding the patience with Leopard and it seems things have not been thought out, any one else had this problem or Is the answer starring me in the face, go back to OS X ??? Please Help a slowly depreciating MAC fan !
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Font Book won't remove font files

I've been doing some testing with Font Book in hopes to replace Suitcase for font management. I've been testing on OS X 10.4.5 with Font Book 2.0.2.
I have FB prefs setup with User as the default install location. Getting fonts installed works fine. To simplify for testing I'm just using one source folder with one family of fonts in it. So I drag the source folder into the FB window where I have created a collection called Temp.
The font files are copied into ~/Library/Fonts, just as they should be, and are now available to the system. When I select the font family in FB and choose Remove Font, it disappears from FB, however the font files remain in ~/Library/Fonts.
According to all documentation I've read, that is not the expected behavior. When Remove Fonts is used within FB, the font files should be moved to the trash.
In addition, since the font files are being left in ~/Library/Fonts, if I try to add the same source folder back into FB, nothing happens, they just simply do not load. If I manually remove the lingering fonts from ~/Library/Fonts I am then able to add the source folder again.
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"When I select the font family in FB and choose Remove Font, it disappears from FB, however the font files remain in ~/Library/Fonts.
Where are you selecting the font, from within the "All Fonts" collection, or within the "Temp" collection? If you've selected it from within your Temp collection, "Remove" only removes the font from the collection, not from your installed fonts. To remove the fonts from your installed fonts, you need to select them from within the All Fonts collection.
I think what you might want to do rather than create a collection is to create an actual "Temporary" font library. In Font Book, select the All Fonts collection so that the focus is in the leftmost column and choose "New Library" from the action menu. Name it "Temporary" (or whatever else you'd like) and then hit enter. Notice it's listed above the dividing line which separates libraries on the top with collections on the bottom. Now, drag your folder of fonts from the Finder onto the "Temporary" library icon in Font Book. NOTE: A reference to the fonts will be added to Font Book; the fonts themselves are not copied but remain where they are in the Finder and are activated or deactivated from there. Now, whether you select the fonts from within the All Fonts library or the Temporary library, the "Remove" command will remove the fonts from Font Book. (Since the fonts remained in their original location, when they're removed from Font Book they're not moved to the Trash; rather, the reference to them is simply removed from Font Book).
Hope this helps....
Dual 2.7 GHz PowerPC G5 w/ 2.5 GB RAM Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Font Book Issues Installing a font

I was recently given a font that doesn't seem to want to install in Font Book. At first I thought the files were corrupted but I tried installing the same font on my MacBook Pro and it worked fine. I have tried to add the font from the Font Book interface, tried dragging and dropping the files into Font Book, and tried double-clicking the file and installing it from the file window... Nothing seems to work.
I did uninstall Suitcase Fusion about 3 months ago, mostly because I really didn't need it anymore. At least not worth the headache it was giving me. But I haven't had any font issues after the uninstall til now. I followed Extensis' unstall directions to the T.
Anyways I am at a loss as to why this font won't install. Any ideas?
Thanks in advance.

From the sounds of it, you don't have the whole font. Type 1 PostScript fonts are a set. One file is a suitcase containing all of the low res bitmap screen fonts. The rest are the outline printer fonts. As an example, here's Adobe Garamond.
Adobe Garamond
AGarBol
AGarBolIta
AGarIta
AGarReg
AGarSem
AGarSemIta
The first file which I highlighted in green is the font suitcase of bitmap screen fonts. The rest are the outline printer fonts.
1) The files for a Type 1 PostScript font must have both the screen and printer fonts for a given set in order to work. They also must be in the same folder.
2) The suitcase of bitmap fonts will work alone, but output will be terrible since the system will print the fonts using the 72 dpi screen fonts in the suitcase if the outline portions are missing.
3) Having only the outline fonts will not work. You will get exactly what you are having problems with. You can see the fonts, but they will not load. That's not a problem with Font Book, Suitcase or other font manager. None of them, nor the system itself will load outline fonts from a Type 1 PostScript font without the matching suitcase of screen fonts present.

Font Book Automatic Font Activation

Hello
I have been happily using Automatic Font Activation from font book for quite long time. Today i noticed that feature absolutely died. Did not heal cleaning caches, restarting ATS Server via ATSUtil in Terminal command line. Simply feature stop to work and i did not really change anything.
Please anyone could help me fix it?
Do not suggest me any 3rd party apps i just liked it way it was before it stop working
If that help, problem occurs only on my Mac Pro. All seem to work fine on my Macbook Pro

You've done your trouble shooting!
Try repairing disk permissions. It can fix a myriad of problems.
Quit any open applications/programs. Launch Disk Utility. (Applications/Utilities) Select MacintoshHD in the panel on the left, select the FirstAid tab. Click: Repair Disk Permissions. When it's finished from the Menu Bar, Quit Disk Utility and restart your Mac. If you see a long list of "messages" in the permissions window, it's ok. That can be ignored. As long as you see, "Permissions Repair Complete" when it's finished... you're done. Quit Disk Utility and restart your Mac.
If that doesn't help, try forcing background tasks...
Mac OS X: How to force background maintenance tasks (logs and temporary items)

My Font Book is missing some fonts??

Hi,
I've upgraded from Tiger to Leopard. Tiger is backed up on a portable drive that is currently plugged into a USB port on my Mac.
The following has happened three.
I just opened a website and a window opeds (on the Mac not the website) telling me that Safari wants to use a certain font (in this case Garamond) that is on the Tiger Back up drive. I don't recall the name of the other two fonts.
Is there any particular reason why the Font Book on Leopard does not have these fonts?
Is there any reason why I shouldn't add them?
How do I do add them? Is it just cut and paste (I don't want to mess anything up)?
Thank you.

Just copy and paste to add.
Depends on how you upgraded as to what would have been copied where, and may explain why fonts are now missing.
Font book by default only installs fonts for you, but you may have changed it to install for all users, in which case it would copy to your main system folder and would explain why they are missing as you now have a new system folder. Nothing is carried over from old to new system folder when upgrading.
Just copy the missing fonts from the drive to your machine. Should just be a double click to install.

How can I get Font Book to install new fonts with Lion OS X without crashing?

Font Book is unresponsive using Lion 10.7.1. When I click on Font Book icon in the dock, I get "Application not Responding". Can't install any new fonts. Anyone else having this issue?
I can get to the open Font Book window if I click on Mission Control to get there, but once there I see spinning wheel, which does not stop.
Any suggestions on how to get Font Book to work well on Lion?

Quick update... I removed all non System fonts from ~/Library/Fonts and deleted com.apple.fontbook.plist from ~/Library/Preferences.
Now FontBook doesn't crash when launched.
I think I'm going to use a 3rd party application to manage all non Apple/System fonts. Hopefully that will avoid any future problems.

Font Book does not recognize fonts in /library/fonts

I just did an erase and install. I chose to install extra fonts into the system and this wierd problem just started yesterday. Font Book will not recognize the fonts in the /library/fonts folder. Font book will not even install additional fonts in this state. I restarted the computer and that seemed to fix the problem. But now it's back again. I think it happened after I woke the computer from sleep mode, however the problem does not appear everytime I wake the computer up. I noted the following entries in the system log that seem to coincide with the problem after waking the system.
(after the system is waked)
Jan 2 15:41:35 (name) crashdump[991]: configd crashed
Jan 2 15:41:36 (name) crashdump[991]: crash report written to: /Library/Logs/CrashReporter/configd.crash.log
Jan 2 15:41:36 (name) launchd: Server 0 in bootstrap 1103 uid 0: "/usr/sbin/lookupd"[981]: exited abnormally: Hangup
Jan 2 15:41:38 (name) kernel[0]: SIOCPROTOATTACH_IN6: en0 error=17
Jan 2 15:41:38 (name) configd[992]: LINKLOCAL: inet6attachinterface(en0) failed, File exists (17)
Jan 2 15:41:38 (name) kernel[0]: SIOCPROTOATTACH_IN6: fw0 error=17
This is the console entry I get when I attempt to install a font from /library/fonts when the Font Book is "blinded".
2006-01-02 17:20:48.784 Font Book[1480] Failed to deactivate container 34, with status -45.
2006-01-02 17:20:49.246 Font Book[1480] ATSFontActivateFromFileSpecification w/Validation options failed -120
2006-01-02 17:20:49.246 Font Book[1480] file://localhost/Users/~/Library/Fonts/Zapfino.dfont
2006-01-02 17:20:49.246 Font Book[1480] ATSFontActivateFromFileSpecification failed -120
2006-01-02 17:20:49.247 Font Book[1480] file://localhost/Users/~/Library/Fonts/Zapfino.dfont
Does anybody know what the problem is and how to fix it?

Well, I'm glad trashing the fonts cache fixed that problem. Font conflicts have been known to totally screw up things like MS Office. Whether or not it could screw up launchd, I don't know. But, if the problem doesn't resurface, then it definitely did.
However, I'd send a bug report on the launchd crash to Apple and include the crash report. Send bug reports and enhancement requests to Apple via its Bug Reporter system. Go to <https://connect.apple.com/MemberSite> and join the Apple Developer Connection (ADC)—it's free and available for all Mac users and gets you a look at some development software. Then, go to <https://bugreport.apple.com/>, click on the Login to the Apple BugReporter link (using your ADC username and password), and file your bug report/enhancement request. The nice thing with this procedure is that you get a response and a follow-up number; thus, starting a dialog with engineering. If your item isn't fixed with a new update, you can fire a follow-up on your original, via e-mail.

Font Book not reading .pfm fonts

I have some .pfm PC Type 1 fonts I need to use but Font Book does not recognize them. Can they be converted to another format Font Book can read? Or do I have to repurchase the fonts?

Kurt Lang wrote:
PC Type 1 PostScripts have never been able to be used on the Mac. Same is true trying to use a Mac Type 1 PS font on the PC. You have a few options.
1) The Adobe applications (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign), starting with the CS2 suite, can indeed read these fonts. Place them in the /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Fonts/ folder and you will be able to use Windows Type 1 PostScript fonts with the Adobe programs. This is the ONLY place this will work. All other Mac applications won't have a clue what to do with the paired .pfb and .pfm files.
2) Convert them. One of the nicest is TransType. The pro version is more, but don't bother with the light version since it can't save OpenType format. Unless back out to Mac Type 1 PS is fine for you.
3) A free method is to install Font Forge. This is an open source project. I haven't tried it myself, but others here say it works well. It's a full font editor such as FontLab or Fontographer. I would imagine you could save fonts out as Mac Type 1 PostScript or OpenType, but I can't be sure.
The Adobe applications (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign), starting with the CS2 suite, can indeed read these fonts. Place them in the /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Fonts/
Just want to clarify that with CS4 the directory path /Library/Application Support/Adobe/Fonts/ does not exist and I am still looking for a solution.

Font Book - attach notes to fonts?

Is there any way to attach a note to a font? for example, a font not otherwise notable that has a few remarkable characters, or unusual numbers.

So far no answers here. But I have found out that the free Linotype Font Explorer offers comments and labels, so I am going to try using it. It has more capabilities than Apple's FontBook.

Font Book shows duplicate HelvNeue fonts but will not remove

In trying to solve a Messages problem per solution provided (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5972565?tstart=0) I find my Fontbook showing the entire Helvetica Neue family as having duplicates when running a Validation. Checking for enablled duplicates - there are none. I have restored the system fonts. That solved earlier problems with other fonts but not the HelvNeue. Validation still shows errors with duplicates.
I am running Suitcase fusion 5 but HelveticaNeue is not in its system at all.
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Font Management in OS X might help.

Font Book is selecting random fonts in word and pages

When I try to click a font for example, Times, it changes to a completely random one in pages or word. I downloaded new fonts but now i cannot change it back. Please help!

Hi Fitzy564! Welcome to the AppleWorks forum, a forum dedicated to the application AppleWorks. Your question would be better answered in Pages forum or MacOs 10.5 forum on this site. It would also help if you would describe the problem in more detail, like when did this start, have you done some maintenance late on the computer, new installed third applications, what does really happen when you choose a font etc. .

System fonts not showing in Font Book

I am using Font Agent Pro as a font manager and am wondering if there's a conflict with it and Apple's Font Book. I cannot get the system fonts to show up in Font Book and, hence, those (System) fonts don't show in Apple apps, e.g., Safari, Grapher, Text Edit, etc., etc.
The only way I can get the system fonts to show in apple apps it to drag the System>Library>Fonts folder to the "Collection" column onto the "Computer" collection. This is fine, but it copies the System fonts to the ComputerName>Library>Fonts folder.
I've tried for hours to get the System fonts to show in Font Book and do it without the System fonts being copied to the Library or User folder, i.e., I want the System fonts to stay in the System fonts folder only.
If I boot into another partition and bring up Font Book everything works as I would expect, and Font Agent Pro is not installed on that partition...
Any Ideas?
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Hi PS1,
I am using Font Agent Pro as a font manager and am wondering if there's a conflict with it and Apple's Font Book.
Yes, in a sense. If you always open and close your fonts through FAP's interface, then it's no problem leaving Font Book on your Mac. It will simply sit there and take up a small amount of disk space.
That said, it's still a nuisance having more than one font manager on your computer at a time. Say you disable all of the fonts in Font Book that you can. Assuming the fonts are still in the /Library/Fonts/ folder, you then turn them on and off with FAP. The problem then is which orders are the applications going to believe? Are the fonts active, according to FAP? Or inactive, according to Font Book?
Also, if you double click on any font to quick activate it, both FAP and Font Book will activate the font. So you will find yourself confused fairly often when you deactivate the font in FAP, but they still keep showing up in your applications as active. That would be because Font Book is still holding it open.
So if FAP is going to be your main font manager, then copy Font Book off to another disk for safe keeping (so you don't have to use Pacifist or an OS install to get it back on your system if you need, or want to), and then remove it from your hard drive.
Definitely don't remove the /System/Library/Fonts/ folder! If you remove Lucida Grande from its default location in any way, you will lose control of your desktop. The only way I can think that Taavi managed to accomplish this was moving files around booted to an external drive, or from another Mac via FireWire Target Mode. It's impossible to do on the same drive your booted to. You'll lose control of the desktop every time if you remove Lucida Grande. Although Taavi may have made his/her copy to the /Library/Fonts/ folder. That at least would still leave an active copy of Lucida Grande somewhere, but I highly recommend against that sort of handling of the system fonts.

Deactivating Font Book

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.

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.

Font Book crashes when trying to remove corrupt fonts

I have recently upgraded to Snow Leopard and am having problems with my fonts.
After installing some of my previously used fonts, some of them didn't pass validation. I don't mind removing them - I barely use 1% of the fonts I have, but when I run Font Validation in Font Book and then select all the corrupt files and click "Remove" - Font Book just gets stuck.
Then I went by the list and removed MANUALLY all the invalid font files (the ones with the red cross sign).
Then only the minor warnings remained , but even when I try to remove them with Font Book - it still crashes.
It's ridiculous to remove them manually one by one, cause I have a huge collection of 1000s of fonts and there are more than 500 corrupt fonts there. I'm not using many fonts, but I want to keep my library up and working, so I want to get rid of everything that might cause problems...
Any help?

Hi Kurt
Sorry, was busy, didn't answer for some time. Thanks - it helped me to run Font Book again and install new fonts, but Font Book is still causing me a lot of trouble - never had so much in Leopard - I'm frustrated, maybe you can help on those:
After completely wiping clean all my fonts databases and folders etc. I've started loading back my Font libraries into Font Book. I don't copy fonts to any new folder, I just activate them from wherever they are without copying. First thing I noticed, is the amount of "corrupt" fonts has increased enormously - I have a couple of folders with alsmot all 400-500 fonts corrupt (yellow sign) with this error message: 'kern' table structure and contents. All of them with the same Error message.
The next thing that happened, is that at some point Font Book has just deleted my new font libraries again without any notice. Then I installed them back again. It deleted them again (I think after a restart).
Another bug is that Font Book always activates all the new fonts upon loading them, although I clearly runed off "Automatic fonts activation" in the Preferences. So every time I load a library I manually disable all of the fonts, and then enable only the ones I use.
BUT! What happens next, is completely outrageous - when I launched FB next time, all my new font libraries where activated again! jezus - I had to go and disable them all and again activate the ones I need. This repeated several times, until I decided to delete the fontbook.plist prefs file from Preferences. I think it helped for now, but I'm not sure yet - will wait and see.
Also there is a bug in FB, that when I install a new library, it always jumps my cursor into renaming the name of this library, and doesn't let me navigate the fonts with keyboard, unless I restart. This is an obvious bug.
And the last thing that happened is that I cannot type my Baltic languages fonts anymore - the input of the keyboard is completely wrong. Those are TrueType fonts, and most of them worked perfectly in Leopard with InDesign. Now when I type the baltic letters in InDesign I see squares. But when I open Glyphs - I see all those letters and need to put them in manually from Glyphs panel. This is totally frustrating and I cannot work. But I will make a separate post about this issue.
Thanks in advance for help...

Font Book automatically activates deactivated fonts

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