The "How To Get Rid of Foreign Fonts" Question

[John Neumann]

I searched. No one has come a usable fix as far as I can tell. I don't know how much is a Mac OS or Adobe issue but there MUST be a way to delete/hide fonts from a dropdown menu. I spent a good deal of time deleting foreign fonts from Mac's Font Book but they still showed up in my dropdown list for PS/Illust/InDesign.

[DKTR Jeroen]

You can easily clean the system fonts that you don't need and leave the ones that are required by the OS by starting from an external hdd. I have multiple hdd's in my good old Mac Pro so I just installed macOS on one of them, booted from that disk and moved the fonts from my startup disk to another location. Later I made them available through FontExplorer so they can still be activated when needed.

Disable SIP

System fonts are protected by System Integrity Protection (SIP). It is easy to temporarily disable this safety measure:

1. Reboot your Mac into Recovery Mode by restarting your computer and holding down Command+R until the Apple logo appears on your screen
2. Click Utilities > Terminal
3. In the Terminal window, type "csrutil disable" (without quotes) and press Enter
4. Restart your Mac

SIP is now disabled and you can remove/relocate system fonts.

Be sure to check Font Management in macOS and OS X​ (see link below) for the required system fonts.

Enable SIP

To enable SIP folow the above steps but now enter "csrutil enable" (without quotes).

Check 3 locations:

1. User/Library/Fonts
2. Library/Fonts
3. System/Library/Fonts

Here's some great info on required macOS fonts:

Font Management in macOS and OS X​

Extensis PDF Font Management Best Practices

Updated for macOS 10.12 (macOS 10.13 has same required fonts)

https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/1740477/Font-Management/Documents/Mac-OS-Font-Management-Best-Practic...

Also, I removed all Hebrew, Arabic and Asian fonts from Adobe CC 2017. This dramatically shortens the font list. These fonts can't be managed with FontExplorer or other font manager you prefer working with as they are not installed in one of the system font folders. For instance:

Illustrator > Show Package Contents > Contents > Required > Fonts

While inside the Contents perform a search for Fonts and check all font folders that come up. Leave the .css files and Adobe Sans MM, AdobeSanMM. I think these are used for the interface. I did the same with InDesign and Photoshop. I have been doing this since a few years now and CC apps work just fine without them.

It's a shame that Apple, Adobe, etc keep littering my system with foreign fonts I don't actually use or understand. This should really be an optional install.

[sergem2900309]

Hello all. So I tried doing some of the recommended methods here and while they worked to an extent, I still haven't managed to get rid of some few foreign fonts. Please find attached renegade fonts that remained in my illustrator.

These are how my font folders in the system, library and package content of the app (required and resources folders) look like:

Any further help will be much appreciated

[Test Screen Name]

What makes you want to get rid of Arial Unicode MS? It is a font containing many, many scripts (we can't really say "language" in general for a font) including English letters. Some Microsoft apps may fail if it is removed.

[Test Screen Name]

And the consequence of removing Apple Symbols may be dire.

[Test Screen Name]

Apple Symbols - Wikipedia "From Mac OS X 10.5 onward, is to be found at /System/Library/Fonts/Apple Symbols.ttf, meaning it is now considered an essential part of the system software, not to be deleted by users."

[sergem2900309]

Ok thanks for the help. Actually it's just those 4 chinese-looking fonts at the top of the screenshot i provided that I'd like removed. I just don't want seeing them in my font list and I'm guessing they might even be cluttering my illustrator's performance?

[DKTR Jeroen]

Adobe Illustrator.app / Contents / Required / PDFL Resource / Resource / Fonts

• KozGoPr6N-Medium.otf
• KozMinPr6N-Regular.otf

Adobe Illustrator.app / Contents / Required / Fonts

• KozGoPr6N-Regular.otf

Also Variable crap font gimmicks are located here.

[DKTR Jeroen]

Among other things it is used for star ratings in apps like iTunes and FontExplorer. Disable this font and you'll notice that the stars disappear, enable and they reappear. Very easy to reproduce.

[DKTR Jeroen]

Eventually you will have some foreign fonts installed because the system needs those to run (don't ask me why ). I found out that Messages app won't show emoji without the fonts AppleSDGothicNeo.ttc and ヒラギノ角ゴシック W3.ttc installed. Which sucks, I know (sucks that those fonts are required). The author has included this also:

"An early update to High Sierra changed something that affected the display of emojis in Messages. Possibly a framework installed for the Safari 11.0.1 update. Whatever the cause, Messages now requires the fonts AppleSDGothicNeo.ttc and ヒラギノ角ゴシック W3.ttc to display emojis. Otherwise, all you get is the question mark in a box from the font LastResort. These two fonts have been added to the minimum font list for the System folder."

Info on required macOS fonts can be found here: Font Management in macOS

See screenshots below for AI fonts

[rashida61273135]

When I generate Index in English language document, Adobe Arabic Font some takes over as default font and the index is generated in Arabic numerals and from Right to Left. My InDesign CC is not Middle Eastern version. I thought by deleting or hiding fonts from the folder will help but it didn't. Now reading this thread, I am disappointed that there is no easy way of getting rid of a font. How can I generate Index from Left to right and in English numerals? Thanks.

Rashid Arshed

[Zaid Al Hilali]

Rashid. Your issue in my opinion isn't related to this thread, your question can be posted in Adobe InDesign forum. Regarding your document, did you or someone else create it in InDesign Middle Eastern version? What ever your answer, I suppose you did fix the issue by simply changing the font to a Latin font that doesn't have any ١٢٣٤ numerals right?