Using the Font Book

1783 days ago in Essential Apps by Brent | 10 Comments

Mac uses the Font Book to keep a list of all your fonts in one place. Most people don’t even open the Font Book very often because they can display fonts in the Universal Font Panel in the application. But Font Book has other options that make it worth a look.

Adding Fonts
If you do any kind of graphics work, you can become a font junkie pretty quickly. Fonts are graphic; they are artistic, and different fonts give different visual messages. You can add fonts to your collection using Font Book. Use Finder to find a font that has been downloaded or is on a CD and double click on it. Font Book will open the font and display it for you. Click on “Install Font” to add it to your collection.

Corrupted Fonts
Sometimes a font does not display correctly, and may be corrupted. Font Book will tell you if it is or not. Click on the font and then on File. The pull-down menu will display the option to Validate Font. Choose it, and it will check the font and let you know if there are problems with it.

Organizing Fonts
As you collect fonts, it’s helpful to organize them into collections. Mac starts you out with a few collections, and you can add your own. Click on the File button and choose Add Collection. Then drag and drop the fonts you want in that collection.

Deleting Fonts
If your font collection gets too unwieldy, you can use Font Book to delete unwanted fonts. BE CAREFUL, though, because Mac needs some fonts you might want to delete.

DO NOT EVER DELETE fonts in the system font file. These fonts are:

• Keyboard.dfont
• LastResort.dfont
• Monaco.dfon
• Geneva.dfont
• LucidaGrande.dfont

Keyboard and LastResort aren’t listed in your Font Book, but you may find them in a list somewhere. Don’t remove them.

• Helvetica fonts, including Helvetica.dfont can be removed if you immediately replace them with another version. Helvetica is a system font.
• AquaKanaRegular.otf, AquaKanaBold.otf. These fonts don’t appear in your Font Book, so you’re not likely to accidentally remove them. Don’t go looking for them—they shouldn’t be removed.
• Fonts in the Times and Courier families are used by the computer and a gazillion applications and websites. If you delete them, you might have trouble reading some docs. The other common fonts you want to keep are Symbol and Zapf Dingbats.

Some users never feel a need to open the Font Book. But people who work with graphics, or who are just font junkies, will find this little organizational tool very useful.