How to get rid of dozens of irrelevant fonts in the font menu?

[TypoMan23]

I am new-ish to CC, and I noticed that I now have dozens of irrelevant fonts in my menu bar. Fonts I will never ever use. They only clutter up the menu.

In my work I use only 3-4 type families, and have no need for all these other fonts that seem to have been installed on my system since upgrading from CS3 to CC, and from OSX to Monterey.

Is there any way to get rid of all these fonts I will never use, so that my font menu will only show the ones that I need?

Thank you for any help. 

[Manan Joshi]

The only way that I can think of would be uninstall the local fonts and for Adobe Fonts you can deactivate them. See the following article for Adobe Fonts.

https://helpx.adobe.com/in/fonts/using/managing-fonts.html

-Manan

[Abambo]

What about uninstalling the fonts? If the fonts are from https://fonts.adobe.com, use that site to uninstall all unused fonts. As for other fonts coming with older application and being installed on your system, you will need to use the system provided tools to uninstall those. You have to be careful not to uninstall the system required fonts, however. 

I define my paragraph and character styles and rhen I rarely need to go back to the fonts menu. So that too, may be an ekegant manner to simply ignore those fonts.

BTW: Keeping the font list small will improve the system performance.

[TypoMan23]

Thanks for the reply.

Tbh I have no idea why they all came from. They seem to have appeared since I upgraded to CC from CS3. 

[TypoMan23]

...and from upgrading from OSX to Monterey.

[TypoMan23]

I have 339 fonts in Computer. I don't know these fonts and will never use them in my work. But when I try to turn one of them off, I get this message (attached).
Maybe best not to turn them off, otherwise it might cause havoc with my iMac!?

 

[Abambo]

I doubt that Creative Cloud applications add fonts, as you can access the fonts via the fonts web site, there is no need to install fonts during the install process. CS3 came with a bunch of fonts.

Some of the fonts on your screenshot are system fonts, so they are needed for the OS!

[hobbsian]

System font management in macOS is a bit of a pain. And there are too many. This guy gets it.

[TypoMan23]

I just noticed that if I select "First Word Only" next to the magnifying glass in the font menu window, then it only brings up the fonts I need: the 5 typefaces that I only use in my work.

Solved! 🙂

[Willi Adelberger · Accepted solution]

1. Uninstall all fonts you do not need and the OS does not need.
2. Make in InDesign Favorits and klick on the star to show only favorit fonts.

[TypoMan23]

Thanks. But the real question is how to know which out of 339 fonts MacOS does not need. Deleting such fonts can cause chaos on the iMac...

[Abambo]

You should ask that in an Apple forum. The beauty of the Adobe system is, that you keep control on the fonts. 

[Willi Adelberger]

Don't delete fonts, create a separate folder on the same leve als the font folder with the name "Fonts deactive" and move them there. So you can move them back if you need them again.

[lindamosky]

The point is that you *can't* keep control in the Adobe system. Adobe should allow language filtering. 

[lindamosky]

I wish people would stop answering with, "uninstall the fonts". By now all of you answering these questions should know that the fonts everyone is complaining about are the foreign language fonts Apple is forcing on us without letting us delete them. You are just causing user frustration by forcing someone to try and delete files you know they can't. 

Adobe's answer of, "create a favorites list" is utterly insulting. Besides being time consuming, it's untenable. Adobe is suggesting we create these lists in every CC application and remember to add any new fonts we add to the OS to go through each and every app to add that font to the list. Also, there is a limit to the number of fonts you can favorite. 

What Adobe should do is obvious, but apparently is too lazy to do. Allow filtering for language. It's that simple. Other apps can do it, so there's nothing keeping Adobe from doing it except laziness and/or expecting us to only use their fonts (forcing us to never give up our CC subscription). 

Obviously Apple shouldn't force any user to keep any non-essential file on their system. Forcing all of us to keep these fonts on our system is a reaction to a very tiny number of users ending up at the Genius bar because they deleted Arial and now their system can't funtion, but that's another complaint for another software company. It doesn't mean Adobe shouldn't have built the language filter into their products way before the Sonoma launch. 

[Barb Binder · Accepted solution]

I think working with the Favorites filter as per @Willi Adelberger may be the easiest. 

~Barb

[Kelly5C2A]

Marking all the non-NOTO fonts as Favorites would not only be a serious chore, but then I can't use the Favorites feature to narrow in on fonts to choose from on a particular project, etc -- the way one is supposed to be able to use a Favorites feature... Why is this so ridiculously cumbersome? Just a file we could put never-used default faunts into and not show them - it wouldn't have to impact the system at all, just an adjustment to our display interface.  Does anyone know why Aobde won't do this simple yet INCREDIBLY CONVENIENT thing?

[quoz]

I'd have to agree with this. We edit documents coming from many customers and projects, and the "favorites" vary nearly every time we open a document to make changes. What I'd really like to do is tuck away those we never use--put them out of immediate sight in the Character and Find Font palettes, if not out of system.  Examples are all the Notos, STYX, and asian fonts. The long list seems especially cumbersome in Find Font, as the order in which substitutes are presented is often mysterious to me and I tend to initially slide past the font I'm looking for.

I'm guessing what seems simple to our eyes may be more difficult on the Adobe programming side, but I'll still echo this request.

[DTP-1984]

Yes yes and YES.  Crazy how backwards things have gotten since the simple old days of Now Utilities Fonts and You Control Fonts. Why Adobe can't fix this, who knows. Apple is part of the reason with all the sandboxing. So I guess it's up to Adobe to Sandbox within their apps and make life WAY more enjoyable.  Newer designers just haven't seen how great it used to be for Font menus. Sometimes the reason great ideas don't get upvoted is people never had it that good. Now Utilities was bang on.  You could moved fonts on the menu where every you wanted and you could even colour code them. I had my serif fonts together and coloured blue - san-serif: red - Script green etc.  Nice easy list. The font menu was also in the menu bar and it was REALLY quick to slide your mouse down as far on the screen to where you 'habitiually" learned where that font was.  Zip done. The font menu in Indesign in the tool bar is in a great spot. No need to move it back to the menu bar.  The favourites idea works better than nothing but it's still not great. The small arrow button is a bit harder to hit but the main thing is the font you have selected is on the list when you pull up the font menu, instead if it starting at the top every time - if you know what I mean.  We really shouldn't have to have 573 fonts on a menu.  REally we should have a list that fits on the screen, perhaps. Then be able to perhaps push a short cut key to open up more fonts.  Just an idea. 

[BobLevine]

I for one do NOT long for the old days. Is the current system perfect?

Most certainly no; but to think things were better in the days of 256 glyphs and separate fonts for small caps, etc, is a bit of a stretch. While I've given up on them, there are font managers that can help ease some of the pain.

As far as the features you're talking about, that was never an InDesign feature, and while it may or may not have been built into the operating system or a third-party font manager it has nothing at all to do with InDesign. The fact is we have way more features and way more flexibility today and that does come with a price.

BTW, it's not just fonts that are better; you refer to a list that fits on the screen...how big would that screen be? What would resolution of that screen be? It's a lot more complicated than you're making it out to be.

[DTP-1984]

I am not saying to go back to 256 glyphs and a 9 inch screen. How'd you get that from my comments?  Certainly this new more flexible software of today is more complicated, which would mean making a built in Adobe font list to colour code your font list, place them in whatever order you want and only list the fonts you wanted on all your font menus, in every Adobe app would seem to be simple. Those old software designers had it bang on.  Yet it was Apple that killed it, not letting third party software control system wide fonts.  (security) So if Adobe can't figure it out 'within' their apps how did those old software engineers do it. No. I am not a software designer but one thing for sure, back when all this computer stuff was new, people did a lot of common sense software design that has seemed to have been forgotten.  I come from that new age in the 80's and have seen most of it. New software seems to build on top of itself making things a bit like a messy, piled up garage. Someone needs to take all the stuff out of the garage and place it back thoughtfully.  Everyone knows InDesign has many feature hiding in strange places. All Adobe apps and most of what is out there now. Some drawing apps, you can't even find the colours or even the pencil!  The reason a 1984 mac was so amazing is anyone could use it. A 5 year old could figure it out.  No, I'm not saying they should make InDesign so a 5 year old can use it.  I remember Adobe bragging many years ago that InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator are more alike than ever. nope. not even today I mean placement of tools that are similar etc.  Even some of the terms to do the same type of thing are still different. It was around 2004 I wrote to Adobe with the font menu fix. I know they don't read things.  One day they'll get it. Hire a new guy that has the mind of 1984 Mac software engineers. 

[leo.r]

Yet it was Apple that killed it, not letting third party software control system wide fonts.  (security) So if Adobe can't figure it out 'within' their apps how did those old software engineers do it.

By @DTP-1984

Well. Adobe knows how to do this - they already have an option to filter font list by name. All they need to do is provide a preference to always filter out specific font names specified by the user. Why they don't provide such a preference is a different question.

[lindamosky]

This solution is not easy (because you have to do it for every CC app and you can't save it, so good luck with app upgrades that delete it) and it's incredibly time consuming. It also means you have to remember to favorite every new font you install. Stop giving this answer as an easy solution and recommend people take the issue to Adobe.