Using Font Book on Your Mac

Font Book is the app that comes with your Mac that lets you install new fonts and manage the ones you have. Most Mac users never need to use Font Book, but if you are a designer or content creator you may need to know how it works.

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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at using the Font Book App on your Mac. 
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The Font Book App is built into your Mac. It's a very simple app for installing and managing the fonts that you have. Today it is very easy not to think about fonts at all. Newer Mac users may not even know what they are. If you're in an app like Pages you see the text here is using a specific font. Going to the Format sidebar I can see font here and can see the font is currently Times New Roman. This is what Times New Roman looks like. But if I changed it to something else, like say Futura, you could see Futura has different looking letters. This is a different font. There's a variety of different fonts and you could easily see here in Pages all the fonts that you have and choose one that you want to use for that particular text. 
A Font Book is a little utility that comes with your Mac that allows you to see all these fonts, manage them, install them, and so on. So you can get the Font Book any of the ways you normally launch apps. For instance, you can go to Launchpad, search for it there. You can go to your Applications folder and you can use Spotlight. However you do it when you launch Font Book it looks like this. Now note that Font Book has been completely remade in macOS Ventura. So if you're using an early version of macOS the functionality is basically the same but Font Book is going to look a lot different. 
So here I've selected All Fonts so I see all of the fonts installed on the Mac and I can see each one kind of as this little icon. Representing the font is simply two letters, usually a capital A and a lowercase a for most fonts. I could also switch to just My Fonts. The difference is My Fonts are the fonts that are installed just for this user account on your Mac where as All Fonts are  the System Fonts and the User Fonts. So if I had two user accounts on this Mac I may have different fonts installed for each one. 
Now in addition to using this Icon View here you can also switch to the Sample View here. Click on that and now you can see the fonts are shown horizontally with some sample text. You can change the sample text by just simply clicking on any individual one and changing whatever you want. So, for instance, I might want to add some symbols here on the left. As soon as I click somewhere else you can see how all of them update. So that is my new sample text. So you can edit the sample text anytime that you want. You could also go to this List Mode here and see all of the fonts. Note that a lot of fonts have multiple variations. So, for instance, you could choose a font like this and you could see there are multiple different types. Now on any of these views you can go to View and then you can Show the Pane. Then you see a sample here on the right. So I can easily see these variations here or choose another font or I can switch, say, to this view and get all of the letters here. I can switch to this view and use the Information Sidebar here on the right to be able to see more. 
So if you're looking for a font to use in a project you could use Font Book to do that. Of course most apps will show you a preview of the font, like here in Pages, so you don't necessarily need to use Font Book. That's why a lot of people can go completely without using Font Book at all. 
The other thing you can do with Font Book is you can use it to install new fonts. So once you have a font, and I've got a folder here filled with fonts that I have purchased in the past, you can simply take any font that you want and drag it into Font Book. You can also just drag and drop to the Application Icon. You could also just double click in the Finder and it will open it up in Font Book. So when I do that you'll see the step here that I need to complete in order to install it. It will show me a preview. It will show me any variations and I can click the Install button. Once I do I can see it is now installed. Now whether it is installed just for this user or for all the users on this Mac that depends on a setting in Font Book Settings. Then go to Installation and you can choose If New Fonts Are Installed For the Current User Only or for All Users.
If you ever want to uninstall a font you can select it and then choose Edit and Remove to remove that font. You also have the option of Deactivating Fonts. So if I have a font chosen I can go to Edit and Deactivate. What will happen is the font stays installed. So it is not removed from my Mac. It is just no longer going to show up in apps anymore. Now this can be handy if, say, you're a graphic designer and you have a ton of fonts installed and you find that some of your apps work slower because you have hundreds of different fonts. You can deactivate the ones you don't use very often. Then easily select them again and activate them. 
The Sidebar here has some functionality. You can create collections and these are just ways to basically look at the different fonts you've got. So you can create a new collection here. You can name it whatever you want. You can put different fonts in it. So if you're looking for a font that say Font or Modern you can go to the Font Book and quickly find the ones that you put in those collections. They are like albums in Photos. The fonts are actually in here. They are all in All Fonts. But you have a different way to organize and view them. You can also even create Smart Collections which are kind of like Smart Folders in the Finder or Smart Albums in Photos. You have the ability to Filter here by Active Fonts and Inactive Fonts for instance. 
You also see here Downloadable. What this means is that some of the fonts aren't actually on your Mac. A lot of fonts, particularly ones with languages you're not using, are actually shown as Available here. You'll see the little Download button there. If I were to actually switch languages in System Settings and it needed a specific font, it would prompt you to Download it. But I could download it just here in Font Book by clicking on the little Download button. 
One final thing you should know about is once you have installed the new font it may not necessarily be immediately available in an app that you're using. More and more today it actually is available as soon as you install it. But, if for some reason you don't see it in the app that you are using simply Quit the app and start it again and then it should be there. 
Now it is important to note that a lot of Mac users, perhaps most Mac users, never need to use Font Book. It's good to know it is there but your Mac already comes with a variety of different fonts and you may never need anything except those. But if you do work as a designer then you may find that you want to add more fonts to your Mac to give you more options or perhaps if you work with designers then you may find you want to install certain fonts that they give you in order to view the documents they provide. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 8 Responses to “Using Font Book on Your Mac”

bruce stasiuk

2 years ago

Gary, I went to the App Store and search for Font Book but several different find things came up. How do I know which one is the one you're talking about?

Gary Rosenzweig

bruce: Font Book is built into macOS. It isn't from the App Store. You already have it.

Bill Scheerer

What is the significance of the lock icon that shows next to some fonts in the list view? Are those the default system fonts?

Bill: It means they can't be removed, because yes, they are part of the system.

John Robinson

If I try to deactivate a foreign language font so I dont have to see it in my font list, and for whatever reason the system uses this font, am i blocked from deactivating? I just dont want to see all these useless fonts as a designer. I know how to create a favorite list in Photoshop, but not sure in Font Book.

John: You shouldn't see those fonts in your apps unless you have that language enabled.

Ken

I have downloaded fonts in the past (not recently). When I open Font book I see "All Fonts" and "My Fonts". A lot of the fonts are the same in both folders. Is this a problem? Should I deactivate any of the doubles or should I just leave them alone. Obviously this has not been a problem because I have never notice any problems. Just being curious. Thanks Ken

Ken: Those aren't "folders" they are ways of viewing your fonts. All Fonts is everything. My Fonts is just for the user account you are logged into. So naturally you'll see those fonts in both places.

Comments Closed.

Using Font Book on Your Mac

Comments: 8 Responses to “Using Font Book on Your Mac”

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