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flowderf

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 11, 2015
35
39
In Word or Pages the Font menus have a ridiculous number of available fonts. Most of them are for languages I never use. I understand that these fonts are needed to help render the broadest number typefaces across many applications. But, can't they just live on my computer and not be in the font menus? And, while we are at it, why don't fonts sync across my devices?

Font management feels basically ignored. Or, it is optimized for the manufacturer and not the user.
Are there any workarounds?
 
Try going to Font Book and deleting other language fonts from the sidebar
 
Not sure.

But, if you go into Language and Region in System Settings, if there are any unwanted languages, those could be removed.
 
In Word or Pages the Font menus have a ridiculous number of available fonts
I don't see that in Pages.
In the Format r-h sidebar, the drop down shows just the English ones and how each font looks.
From the menu Format > Font the inspector windows shows the English ones by default - if it doesn't it is one click to select English, Favourites or Recent.

Word is harder to control (contact Microsoft to complain).

What are your language settings?
 
Am I the only one who likes to see the appearance of a font in the related menu in a design app? Besides - as pointed out - Fontbook allows for collections, deactivating/activating of fonts, and more.
Is this maybe about not being able to remove certain macOS system fonts completely from the system? Well, these are indeed locked down for security reasons.
TL;DR: fonts are actual programs which allows e.g. a bad actor to embed malware into them - hence the lockdown of the core and supplemental system fonts.
In relation to an optional deactivation/removal of the supplemental fonts one might consider giving Apple some Feedback so…
 
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I've submitted this situation via Apple's Feedback form numerous times (pretty much every update since they started locking the System down). Personally, I don't see them ever changing this.
 
Are there any workarounds?

All I can tell you is that yes it's totally idiotic. Apple doesn't allow you to hide system fonts from the list. I asked some Windows users about it, and they told me that it's possible on Windows (can't vouch that it's true.)

Unfortunately, individual apps also don't allow to filter the font list (by either name or otherwise.) Even though implementing font list filtering on the app level is pretty easy, it would be a minimal development effort.
 
Adobe allows you to filter the font list in several ways in most of their apps, but the problem is that you have to manually add new fonts. It would be much better to just blacklist certain fonts or (even better) deactivate them.

There actually is a way to remove the fonts in question, but it requires having multiple Macs and a tremendous effort in the Terminal - with the end result being a more curated font list (good), but numerous buggy system features and apps (bad). It's shocking how many aspects of the OS itself use a glyph or two from so many different fonts to render a relatively minor UI element, etc. To make matters worse, the scenario appears to change with every OS update (I gave up trying to figure it all out a long time ago).
 
Adobe allows you to filter the font list in several ways in most of their apps, but the problem is that you have to manually add new fonts. It would be much better to just blacklist certain fonts

Exactly.

This topic comes up once in a while on InDesign forums.

As a result of one such discussion, I made an experimental concept app (that's only active in InDesign). Among other things, it demonstrates how specific fonts can be filtered out by name by specifying the undesired names in preferences:

 
Played around with your Font Selector app. It shows a lot of potential. I would love to see it more integrated into InDesign (perhaps as a proper ID Panel that can be docked with other Panels) a bit more.

I've already sent one note about the menubar not working correctly with Dark Mode. I couldn't attach an image to the feedback form, but here it is:
ScreenShot 2025-05-15 at 11.04.31 PM.png
 
Played around with your Font Selector app.

Thank you for the feedback!

I'll reply to your email message with more info soon.

In brief: Font Selector is just an experimental stab at this point.

The menu bar panel is just an artefact from the original app that was remade as Font Selector; this menu bar panel isn't functional (I made a note to mention this more prominently on the Font Selector page).

I'd love to keep improving Font Selector and make it into a real product. But at this point, I can only dedicate any further effort to Font Selector if there's any commercial interest in it.

Font Selector is a brief remake of this app repurposed as an InDesign font list:
 
I'm not sure how you're advertising this little experiment, but I can tell you that I don't know a single designer/InDesign user on the planet that would NOT want to thin out their font menu. Apple's insistance on not allowing us to manage ALL the fonts – or at least keeping the mandatory fonts to a bare minimum, is about as annoying as it gets and we all get a little hot under the collar about it. If you really want some professional feedback, perhaps send a press-release to CreativePro.com and other related sites?

That being said, in its current implementation I can't see using it in a working environment. It's a fantastic idea, and the little I've played with it last night, it works perfectly. But it does need some changes in the WAY it works (my opinion, of course).

The main thing is the lack of the ability to dock it with other ID Panels... as it is, it "feels" like a separate app (which I understand that it is). If it were an official ID plug-in, I suspect the adoption rate would be much more to your liking.

The second thing I see is that entering names of fonts to filter manually is actually quite difficult because the font list isn't scrollable while you're typing in the preferences dialog. A better implementation might be checkboxes in the Font Selector list itself (checking the box would be the same as typing the font name in the preferences).

One more item. The size of the app's main window resets to the full height of the screen every time it's launched. It would be much better to respect the size it was set to at the time of quitting the app (or InDesign). This of course would not be an issue if it were an ID panel, but if it must remain as a "3rd party" window, then this would at least be quite helpful.
 
That being said, in its current implementation I can't see using it in a working environment.

I agree with all your feedback.

Like I mentioned, Font Selector was quickly concocted within a couple of days to show a concept to participants of a thread on the InDesign forum. Same here - I wanted to demonstrate that the font list can be filtered and it can be done easily.

Other than that, no effort has been made to make this app user-friendly, well-behaved, or otherwise suitable for a real-world working environment. Right now, I simply don't have any extra time to dedicate to this project, unfortunately.

I'll reply to you by email soon with more details.
 
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