Font Panel Favorites

The Font Panel can be accessed and used in apps like Pages, TextEdit and Mail to change the font and style of currently selected text. You can also save font settings a 'Favorites' in the Font Panel and then easily access those particular styles later. These Favorites will remain in the Font Panel across all of the apps that use it, so you can set up favorites that you use often and access then easily in different apps. You can also customize the font sizes shown in the Font Panel.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com.
On today's episode let's take a look at using Font Panel Favorites.
Now if you use fonts in apps you probably know there are different ways to set up styles as defaults and things you can use again. I'm going to create a new Pages document here. You can see I've got the Format sidebar on and I can change fonts and set character styles.
But there is a way to do this that is across applications. So it not only works in Pages but other places as well. So let me show you here.
I'm going to select the word test. Instead of using this I'm going to go to Format, Font, Show Fonts. Command T is the universal shortcut for this. It brings up something called the Fonts Panel here.
We can use this Fonts Panel here to select the font and it will change it here for what we have selected. So I can select the font and then a variation like there is a bolded variation of this particular font. Different fonts some have a few variations and some have many. This has a whole bunch of different ones here. We can change it and change the size and all of that. 
Now if there is something we are going to be reusing, using a lot not just in Pages but in other applications as well, we can save that as a Favorite.
The way to do that is to click the Tools button here and Add to Favorites. Now if we select the Favorites collection here we will see it has been added and it has been named. The name of the font, the style, and also the point size. We can do that with other fonts as well.
For instance, let's go ahead and select another font here, another size, another style and we'll add that also. Now we see we have two here in Favorites. I have the text still selected and I can very quickly jump between these by simply selecting them here.
Now the great thing about using these favorites here is they work in other applications. So for instance let's switch to TextEdit. Here I am in TextEdit and I have a rich text document and I can also bring up the Fonts Panel. I can type something and select it. You can see I can use the same panel here and my Favorites even show up even though I am using another application.
The same thing is also true even in Mail. I can be composing a new message here and I can also bring up the Fonts Panel with Command T and there are my Favorites here.
So I can create these favorites in any app using this Fonts Panel and then I can access the Favorites very easily anywhere I want.
Now in addition to setting some of the basics here you can even do things like setting the color. So let's select some text here. I can change the color of this. Then once I do that I could Add to Favorites. You can see I have another version here that is a different color. 
I can switch between them but notice that the color doesn't reflect over there. I find that it is hit or miss. Sometimes colors selected from the Fonts Panel work and sometimes they don't. 
Now deleting these favorites here can be a little bit tricky. If you simply alter one you can add a new favorite and you get a second copy of it. But if you want to get rid of it you think hitting the delete key will work. That won't. It will actually delete over here.
The way to do it is to drag out and then it goes away.
You can also add more collections here. So you've got Favorites and it is easy to Add to Favorites thanks to this command right here. But you can also create a collection, call it whatever you want, and then you can drag and drop here.
So you can go into your Favorites and you can drag one in here. It will still be in Favorites because it is still favorited but you will see it also there. So you can kind of create your own collections. The ones you see here actually correspond to groups of fonts that you've got.
For instance, Modern fonts or Traditional fonts. You will see them here. But these that you create are kind of like favorites in that you can set a particular style. 
You can also double click on these and rename them. So if there is something particular like a style that your company uses for correspondence or for headings you can name it that and then have easy access to knowing which one to use.
In addition to creating favorite fonts with a full collection of style and size you can also create your favorite sizes over here. So you've got this command where you can do Edit Sizes and instead of using this default set say for the work you do you are always using font size 20 you can actually add that new size in there and then it will appear there and you don't have to enter it manually every time. You can enter it manually right there but sometimes it is nice to actually have it here and be able to select it.

Comments: 8 Responses to “Font Panel Favorites”

Fred Nelson

10 years ago

I have wanted this capability for years. Thanks for point it out.

Jack

Gary, I've been a Mac user since the 1980s, and I always learn something from your weekly videos. Thank you!

Nate

Can this Font Panel be used in Yosemite to change the system font in Safari, etc. back to Lucida Grande?

Gary Rosenzweig

No, this is for text editing and word processing.

Linda Lyn

I would like be able to do that favoite fonts of my choices,
I will keep try and try hopefully I would able to do it at the end.
Thank you Gary.

Dan McNeil

Gary, great bit of info. Any suggestions on controlling that huge list of fonts. I use Office and Photoshop/Lightroom on my imac. Add a few additional fonts and the list goes on forever. I tried to delete fonts I knew I'd never use, but I found that I messed up some of my apps. Is there a help in OS?

Use Font Book (the app that comes with your Mac) to manage your fonts. Put them into groups if you like, but otherwise just use keystrokes in Office and Adobe font selection pull-downs to quickly get the fonts you want at any time. Any designer-type has a huge list of fonts on their Mac, so it is a common problem.

Matt

MacMost is quite simply the greatest mac related tutorial/tips site! I cannot tell you enough how great it is. I refer to to it often, I look forward to each weeks newsletter and I tell EVERYONE who is new/old to mac about it. Should be a standard for all Apple customers!----great job, keep it up.

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Font Panel Favorites

Comments: 8 Responses to “Font Panel Favorites”

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