Google Material Icons font has stopped working in Illustrator

[ihector]

I have had Google's Material Icons font installed on my MacBook for a long while and have frequently used it with no problems in Illustrator. Suddenly it has stopped rendering. The font is not missing – and it still works in other Adobe apps – but it displays without any visibility (see text selected in screenshot).

[Monika Gause]

Which system is it?

Do you use font management?

[ihector]

Hi Monika. I installed the font on my MacBook (OS 10.15.7) using Font Book. Running the latest Illustrator 2021.

[Ton Frederiks]

Are the icons visible in the Glyphs panel?

[ihector]

Hi Ton. Yes they are.

[Ton Frederiks]

Can you try to insert them by double clicking a glyph?

[ihector]

Yes, that works. So I can insert icons using that method. But it will be very time-consuming to replace every icon in my existing files by doing that!

[Ton Frederiks]

I wonder how you inserted them previously.

They cannot be typed by using regular characters like abc.

[ihector]

But that's exactly how they do work (or did, until yesterday)! And they continue to work like that in XD, for example: https://streamable.com/59cgy0

[Ton Frederiks · Accepted solution]

I learned something new!

Type wifi and you get the wifi icon!

So that works for me in 2021 (25.0).

But I put the font into the Illustrator application folder in a folder I named Fonts, maybe that makes a diffrence.

Or try to reset the AI preferences:

https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/using/setting-preferences.html

[ihector]

Happy to help 😉

Unfortunately neither resetting my Illustrator preferences nor adding the font to a new folder called Fonts (in the Illustrator app folder) has worked for me. I too am running 2021 (25.0).

[Ton Frederiks]

The only difference I can see is the system, I am at Mojave 10.14.6

Maybe someone with your system can do the check.

[defaultrj4o3v5zplff]

Try this:
https://helpx.adobe.com/illustrator/using/special-characters.html