Too many fonts

[BlaydRunner001]

is there a way to (safely) prune the font list in InDesign. I can’t for the life of me understand why hundreds of fonts show up in their menu when I only need to use several per job. Does any other Mac-user find creating style sheets a massive, soul-draining operation because of this?

[Dov Isaacs · Accepted solution]

The very simple reason why so many fonts show up in your font menu in InDesign is because you have all those fonts installed and active on your computer system.

To eliminate all those fonts showing up in your font menu, you have two main choices:

(1) Reduce the number of fonts permanently installed on your computer system. Of course you will need to be exceptionally careful not to prune away fonts required by your operating system (Windows or MacOS).

(2) Use a third party font manager to allow selective activating / deactivating of families of fonts or individual fonts. This also will require some discipline on your part.

          - Dov

[BlaydRunner001]

Thanks Dov.

[edbiggs]

That's not a very good response. I guess you have not tried to delete fonts on a Mac, it's a pain in the ass.

There is that filtering system in InDesign, I don't know if it then applies to the other Adobe applications.

The root problem is Apple using multiple fonts in its system instead of just one or two dedicated fonts. With dedicated system fonts, the user could deactivate any user font without concern for screwing up the computer's system. Really, how many designers need foreign language fonts? In my entire career, I have never had a need for Asian fonts and I would suppose the designers on the other side of the globe very rarely have a need for Western fonts. 

The long string of fonts interrupts the design process and that costs money and tries patience.

[Steve Werner]

@edbiggs,

It sounds like your personal issue is with Apple, not with Adobe.

I'd suggest that if you feel strongly, post your comments on Apple forums, not here.

[coldjtf]

A quicker, simpler solution - use the favourites star in InDesign (in the fonts pallet), to reduce the number of fonts visible to just the ones you use the most.

[JonathanArias]

if you were to use a professional font manager you can de-activate fonts. i do that.

Something like suitcase fusion is a much better way to manage your fonts versus using fontbook. 

[quoz]

We use Suitcase Fusion, but it does not (and per their support, cannot) deactivate system fonts--they always show up in the Adobe menus.

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.

[rob day]

Hi @quoz If you are using MacOS or OSX this tells you what fonts are required by the OS:

http://www.jklstudios.com/