Why is the Font Menu Loaded with Garbage?

[Alameda]

Why is is that I am not allowed to control which fonts appear in my font menus?

I am the owner of the computer, aren't I? The last time I checked, I know that I cannot read or write Chinese, Arabic, Japanese, Korean and Swahili. I know that Apple knows everything, but, honestly, I'm pretty sure I cannot read Greek.

So why is it that I have to have 100's of non-removable fonts? I can never find the fonts I want because the menu scrolls too fast. It isn't even alphabetical, it's like two or three alphabetical lists in a row and there does not seem to be anything I can do about it. If my count is right, my Mac has 278 non-English fonts and they are all non-removable. That's really stupid.

 

[Ben J.]

I never found this to be a problem, but there is always the Library/Fonts folder. I'm assuming that you can move fonts out of it just as we did forty years ago. I guess you'd have to logout/login for changes to take effect.

There is also Fontbook:

Create and manage font collections and libraries in Font Book on Mac

In Font Book on your Mac, create collections to organize your fonts.

support.apple.com

(Just a guess, but it might be that having non-latin fonts in there, helps with translation of those.)

 

[BrianBaughn]

You own the computer…but not the macOS operating system!

I agree there should be some way to limit what's displayed when you trying to create a document.

The fast scrolling font menu problem…I don't remember exactly when that started happening but it was a long time ago.

 

[M4th]

...
(Just a guess, but it might be that having non-latin fonts in there, helps with translation of those.)

Or at least for rendering those fonts correctly with some interesting international websites?

 

[Alameda]

You own the computer…but not the macOS operating system!

I agree there should be some way to limit what's displayed when you trying to create a document.

The fast scrolling font menu problem…I don't remember exactly when that started happening but it was a long time ago.

This. Who's the idiot at Apple who thinks it's just so doggone important to have 362 non-removable fonts in every single font menu my system displays?

There is no person on this earth who can read and write in all of those languages, so why is it an inalterable requirement that we have to scroll past them?

 

[galad]

What appears in the menu font depends on what the app you are using choose to show. Apple doesn't force anyone to show all the 278 non-English fonts.

Apple's Font Picker has already a collection to show only English fonts. Other apps will have to implement something similar, because I don't think Apple is going to change anything.

 

[splitpea]

It used to be possible to use FontBook to enable and disable fonts. Is that no longer the case?

 

[BrianBaughn]

What appears in the menu font depends on what the app you are using choose to show. Apple doesn't force anyone to show all the 278 non-English fonts.

Yes.

• In Font Book "All Fonts" shows about 340.
• LibreOffice shows me about 230.
• TextEdit, Pages and Numbers about 75.
• GraphicConverter about 190.

OP, what app are you using that's displaying all the unwanted fonts?

 

[Arran]

NOBODY is allowed to “choose” to display those fonts. Thats the entire point.

Imagine if Apple decided that every dialog box and menu had to be displayed in 26 different languages at once. “Disk is Full” message appears 26 times. Isn’t it better that you can choose which of those 26 languages you want to use when you set up your Mac?

The Mac has a disability access feature that can read the contents of a dialog box. Shouldn’t Apple force that upon us and always make the OS read every single dialog box always, in 26 different languages, every single time a dialog appears? Because, who knows, you might suddenly be struck blind and capable of only understanding Urdu and not English, right?

If the OS worked that way, it would be unusable. You might even call it “garbage.”

My font menu is garbage. It’s unusable.

Not that I ever go there, but it makes sense to see them all in Font Book for completeness and compatibility. Same reason Finder shows you all the files in a folder even if you're not interested in some of them: Truth.

OTOH, I have no idea why you have all those foreign fonts visible in your apps. I don't. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Could you post a screenshot?

 

[underthere]

I tried to get rid of the fonts I didn’t want through font book once, but they still show up. Maybe I did it wrong.

 

[Alameda]

Yes.

• In Font Book "All Fonts" shows about 340.
• LibreOffice shows me about 230.
• TextEdit, Pages and Numbers about 75.
• GraphicConverter about 190.

OP, what app are you using that's displaying all the unwanted fonts?

You're right... Pages shows far fewer fonts. It's still an entire screenful, and way more than I want, but it's a lot more manageable.

MS Word, on the other hand, shows them all. Here's a screenshot. I cannot remove MSHtaken, MuktaMahee, Muna, Myanmar, Nadeem or New Peninim, for example. I have scoured the four corners of the Internet for a solution, and have not found one.

The standard directions are: Open Font Book and "Disable" the fonts you don't want. But you cannot disable most of these fonts. That's the problem. Of course I'm not arguing against foreign language support; I just want to be able to use my Mac more productively.

 

[LeVan]

You're right... Pages shows far fewer fonts. It's still an entire screenful, and way more than I want, but it's a lot more manageable.

MS Word, on the other hand, shows them all. Here's a screenshot. I cannot remove MSHtaken, MuktaMahee, Muna, Myanmar, Nadeem or New Peninim, for example. I have scoured the four corners of the Internet for a solution, and have not found one.

The standard directions are: Open Font Book and "Disable" the fonts you don't want. But you cannot disable most of these fonts. That's the problem. Of course I'm not arguing against foreign language support; I just want to be able to use my Mac more productively.
View attachment 2622352

In order to understand what is happening in regard to the font menu in any Office app, like MS Word, you should note that MS doesn't follow Apple's guidelines regarding fonts at all. They are all embedded in each app! Removing them is supposed to be possible, according to a post I once found on this site, but it was so complex that I couldn't get it done. Gave up on that. Do a search for "Removing MS fonts in Word" or something similar. It is far beyond my tech level so I am out of here on this one.
See this thread; https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...onts-off.2125763/?post=26469772#post-26469772

 

[benwiggy]

Pages still shows loads of non-Western language fonts its menu. There's all these Noto fonts for starters.

And loads of Sangam fonts.

But even amongst the English Collection, there are fonts that I want to remove, like Apple's version of Avenir Next, which has loads of TrueType hinting errors that cause weird problems in PDFs.

By all means have a minimal fallback so that every glyph can be rendered in something, but 768 fonts in /System/Library....???? (Not counting things like Canela Text and Proxima Nova that keep being downloaded and activated by something.)

As ever, send feedback to Apple if you want some control over this.

 

[MacGizmo]

This "forced fonts" issue in macOS has been discussed ad nauseam across the Web for years.

Apple has not only ignored the complaints by not giving us a way to either turn off or at least hide the hundreds upon hundreds of unwanted fonts, but they've doubled-down on it by adding a few more fonts to the list – and made it even harder to control over the years.

There is no way to remove the fonts. There is no way to turn off the fonts. There is no way to even hide the fonts from font menus... unless of course your app uses Apple's Font Picker, which almost no app outside of Apple's own apps use.

There are work-arounds like custom font filtering like you find in some Adobe apps, but they're quite cumbersome to set up and work with.