Clean up Fonts

[cgratti]

I have way too many fonts installed om my Mac, is there a way to get rid of my font folders and not worry about uninstalling my system fonts?

If I drag my font folder to the trash, will OSX create a new font folder with the default fonts in it?

Or will my system crash from not having the system fonts installed?

 

[mad jew]

Unfortunately fonts don't work that way... I guess you could use Font Book to look through the User fonts (as opposed to System fonts). Deleting many of these fonts shouldn't affect your system but may affect some third party apps such as Office.

 

[macjack1]

If I drag my font folder to the trash, will OSX create a new font folder with the default fonts in it?

You can do that with ~/Library/Fonts, assuming that is where the majority of your fonts are installed. Drag that Fonts folder to your desktop and test. Yes, a new Fonts folder will be created.

But do not mess with /Library/Fonts or /System/Library/Fonts. Only the Font folder in your Home/Library.

Also, a useful utility is Font Finagler if you're having font problems.

-mj

 

[mad jew]

Even though it's possible to delete the fonts via Finder, I still think it might be safer doing it via Font Book or some such utility.

 

[macjack1]

Even though it's possible to delete the fonts via Finder, I still think it might be safer doing it via Font Book or some such utility.

Dragging ~/Library/Fonts to the desktop EDIT: (Not deleting) is a known troubleshooting procedure and will do no harm. You can also accomplish it working via FontBook but take care to only work with "User" fonts. Those should be all the fonts you installed. Unless you are on a multi-user Mac and have installed to /Library/Fonts to make them available to all users.

-mj

 

[macjack1]

If you need to go further than "~" Home directory, see this Apple support topic on fonts to be certain you don't delete any necessary system fonts.

-mj