Turn off fonts in font book

ozpaul wrote:

Like so many others here I find it frustrating that I cant disable fonts in Font Book. Specifically Noto. I don't need fonts in every language other than English. This is a real problem in font menus in desktop apps like affinity publisher for example. I also note with some frustration that this issue doesn't occur in your own apps, pages, keynote or numbers.

There have been many complaints about this issue. Here is one example: FONT BOOK: How to delete some non-favoura… - Apple Community

I got so frustrated that I gave up arguing with people and wrote an app to fix the problem. The rules of the forum do not allow me to post a link to my own app, but if you go to the thread I cited above, you can find the solution.

When Apple locked down the System volume they made it impossible to change things on the System volume. Thus the built-in international fonts used for language support cannot be disabled nor removed as in the past. Fonts you add to the system will be kept in the Data volume and you will be able to disable those fonts.

As to Apple apps not showing all the fonts, they are likely filtering based on the current language in use. When showing a fonts in the inspector view you will see the languages displayed. Affinity apps are showing you everything. When browsing the fonts in Affinity Apps there are several tiny filter buttons at the top, All, Recent, Used, and Favorites. So you could mark the fonts you want to use as favorites in Affinity and when you filter on Favorites you will only see the fonts you marked as one of your favorites.

Going further, you could submit a feature request explaining the desire to filter available fonts based on the system language as a feature request within the Affinity forums. It would likely be useful for other language speakers beyond English. https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/forum/52-feature-requests-suggestions/

Thanks! To be honest, I don't disagree with James Brickley in any way. I used to make very similar arguments in this forum. But then, in one particular argument, someone discovered a hack that would disable these fonts. Arguing wasn't getting me anywhere, so expanded that hack into an easy-to-use app. But it would be better if 3rd party apps had better font management. Among 3rd party apps, Pixelmater Pro is the only one that I've seen that is able to manage fonts properly. And this is not because font management is difficult. My app was modified from an earlier version that I wrote in a few minutes solely to demonstrate how easy it was to display fonts correctly.

But people need to be asking these big corporations, with millions of dollars and thousands of employees, why they can't do fonts properly when some random guy on the internet can do it in a few minutes.

James Brickley wrote:

Love your products Etresoft! Didn't know about your font App.

Thanks! I try to avoid mentioning the font app. It is OK if other people mention it or link to it. But at least EtreCheck is a free app that users don't have to pay for. The font app isn't free. It isn't expensive, but it is the principle of the thing. I'm not going to work for free when all of these big companies are charging hundreds or thousands of dollars and blaming Apple because they can't be bothered to take just a few minutes to improve their own font management.

Love your products Etresoft! Didn't know about your font App.