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Mayhem SWE
Mayhem SWE
Inspiring
December 14, 2023
Question

InDesign Font API, Favourites?

  • December 14, 2023
  • 1 reply
  • 898 views

So I have finally been annoyed long enough that I have begun looking into what can be done about a pet peeve of mine: Apple's insistence on shipping more and more useless fonts as part of macOS, no longer making it possible to disable/remove them, and Adobe's seeming refusal to put in system font filters in their applications (which surely every user ever must want?).

 

In an old thread I saw the suggestion to use font favourites to hide system fonts. I actually had never noticed that this existed in the Adobe applications, but at least that is a start! But although almost everything in InDesign is scriptable (Illustrator is a much sadder state last I looked…), as far as I can tell font favourites is not exposed anywhere in the API?

 

Then I started looking at the C++ plug-in API. Never written a proper plug-in before, but what the hell, how difficult can it be. Searching through the SDK documentation I can't find font favourites exposed anywhere here, either? Not on the IFontMgr, nor an IFontInstance, or an IPMFont.

 

There is an IFontMgr.DeleteFont() method, which ought to permanently remove the font until InDesign is restarted. This particular method has zero documentation though, so presumably Adobe doesn't really intend for anyone but themselves to use it…

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    1 reply

    E
    Community Expert
    Eugene TysonCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    December 23, 2023

    Can you not disable them in Font Book?

     

    Open Font Book:

    1. Click on the Finder icon in the Dock.
    2. In the Finder window, type /System/Library/Fonts in the Search field and press Enter.
    3. The Font Book application will open.

     

    Locate the fonts you want to disable:

    1. In the Font Book window, scroll through the list of fonts.
    2. The fonts that are installed by macOS are typically located in the System Fonts folder.

       

       

     

    Disable the fonts:

    1. Select the fonts you want to disable.
    2. Click on the Edit menu and select Disable Fonts.
    3. A confirmation dialog will appear. Click Disable to disable the selected fonts.

     

    Relaunch applications:

    1. Close the Font Book application.
    2. Relaunch any applications that use fonts, such as InDesign, Photoshop, or Microsoft Office.
    Mayhem SWE
    Mayhem SWEAuthor
    Inspiring
    December 23, 2023

    No, it is not possible. In previous versions of macOS there were various ways to disable some system fonts. Since the release of macOS 13, it is no longer possible to disable any of them. You are stuck with hundreds of useless fonts cluttering up the font menu.

     

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