Unleash the Power of Your Mac’s Fonts with This Amazing Font Book Management Hack!
Mac users are no strangers to the power of typography. They have access to a wealth of fonts optimized for their platform, as well as a font management tool that makes it easy to manage all those fonts. But what if we told you there was a way to unleash the true power of your Mac’s font collection? With this amazing font book management hack, you’ll be able to take control of your fonts in a way you never thought possible.
First, let’s talk about Font Book. This application is included with your Mac and is designed specifically to handle your font collection. With Font Book, you can view all your installed fonts, install new ones, and organize them into collections to make it easier to find the one you need.
But that’s just the beginning. With our font book management hack, you’ll be able to do so much more with your fonts. Here’s how it works:
Open Font Book and select all the fonts you want to manage.
Create a new collection by clicking on the “plus” button in the bottom left corner of the Font Book window.
Name the collection something that makes sense to you, such as “Design Fonts” or “Serif Fonts.”
Drag all the selected fonts into the newly created collection.
So far, so good. But here’s where things get interesting.
With the collection selected, click on the “gear” button in the toolbar and choose “Export Collection.”
Choose a location on your Mac where you want to save the collection and give it a name.
Click “Save.”
Congratulations! You’ve just created a portable font collection that you can take with you anywhere. You can copy it to a USB stick or Dropbox so that you can access it on other Macs or even Windows PCs. You can also email it to a fellow designer, or upload it to a font-sharing site.
But it gets even better.
Open the exported collection in Finder.
Right-click on one of the font files and choose “Get Info.”
Navigate to the “Open with” section and choose “Font Book.”
Click the “Change All” button.
This simple step will set all the font files in the collection to open with Font Book, rather than whatever default program your Mac is set to use. This means that when you double-click on any font in the collection, it will open directly in Font Book, making it even easier to view and manage.
And there you have it – a powerful font book management hack that will revolutionize the way you work with fonts on your Mac. By creating portable collections and setting them to open with Font Book, you’ll be able to take your font library with you anywhere and have instant access to everything in your collection. Give it a try, and unleash the power of your Mac’s fonts!
Fonts may be second only to bookmarks when it comes to things that tend to accumulate on a computer to the point of being out of control. Part of the problem with fonts is that there are so many free ones available on the web, it’s difficult to resist the urge to accumulate them.
Even if you have hundreds of fonts on your computer, you might not have just the right one for a particular project. Here are some ways you can use Font Book, the Mac’s font manager, to organize your collection of typefaces.
How to Create Libraries of Fonts
Font Book comes with four default font libraries: All Fonts, English (or your preferred language), User, and Computer. The first two libraries are pretty self-explanatory and are visible by default within the Font Book app. The User library contains all of the fonts installed in the yourusername/Library/Fonts folder, and accessible only to you. The Computer library contains all of the fonts installed in the Library/Fonts folder, and it’s accessible to anyone who uses your computer. These last two font libraries may not be present within Font Book until you create additional libraries in Font Book.
These instructions apply to devices with OS X 10.5 or later.
You can create additional libraries to organize a large number of fonts or multiple collections and then break out smaller groups as collections.
- Open Font Book from your Applications folder.
- Click the File menu, and select New Library.
- The keyboard shortcut to create a new library is Option+Command+N.
- Enter a name for your new library and press Return.
- In the new collection, right-click and select Add Fonts.
- Navigate to Macintosh HD > Library > Fonts and select the items you want to add to your new library.
- To select multiple adjacent fonts, hold Shift and click the beginning and end of the range. To highlight items that aren’t next to each other, hold Command and click each font you want to add individually.
- Click Open to add the selected fonts to your library.
How to Organize Fonts as Collections
You probably have favorite fonts that you use frequently. You may also have ones that you only use for special occasions, such as Halloween, or special fonts, such as handwriting or dingbats, that you don’t use often. You can organize your fonts in collections so that it’s easier to find a specific font, without browsing through hundreds of items every time you want to use it.
Open Font Book from your Applications folder.
Click the File menu, and select New Library.
The keyboard shortcut to create a new library is Option+Command+N.
Enter a name for your new library and press Return.
In the new collection, right-click and select Add Fonts.
Navigate to Macintosh HD > Library > Fonts and select the items you want to add to your new library.
To select multiple adjacent fonts, hold Shift and click the beginning and end of the range. To highlight items that aren’t next to each other, hold Command and click each font you want to add individually.
Click Open to add the selected fonts to your library.
The font collections you create in Font Book will be available in the Font menu or Fonts window of many applications, such as Microsoft Word, Apple Mail, and TextEdit.
You’ll notice that Font Book already has some collections set up in the Collection sidebar, but it’s easy to add more.
- Click the File menu, and select New Collection or click the plus (+) icon in the bottom left corner of the Font Book window.
- The keyboard shortcut for a new collection is Command+N.
- Type in a name for the collection and press Return.
- Click the All Fonts entry at the top of the Collection sidebar.
- Click and drag the desired fonts from the Font column to the new collection.
- Repeat the process to create and populate additional collections.
How to Make a Smart Collection
Like the Smart Playlist feature in iTunes, Font Book has a feature that automatically populates a collection based on criteria that you set. Here’s how to create a Smart Collection.
Click the File menu, and select New Collection or click the plus (+) icon in the bottom left corner of the Font Book window.
The keyboard shortcut for a new collection is Command+N.
Type in a name for the collection and press Return.
Click the All Fonts entry at the top of the Collection sidebar.
Click and drag the desired fonts from the Font column to the new collection.
Repeat the process to create and populate additional collections.
- Open the File menu and click New Smart Collection.
- Type a name for the collection in the text box.
- Set conditions for Font Book to add typefaces to this collection. Your options are:
- Family Name: the name of the font (e.g., Helvetica, Palatino).Style Name: the version of the family (e.g., Condensed).PostScript Name: a variation of a font’s full name that you can find by selecting a font and pressing Command+I. An example of a PostScript name is “NuevaStd-Cond,” which is an abbreviation of “Nueva Std Condensed.“Kind: the file type of the font. Examples are TrueType, OpenType, and PostScript. A single font can fall under multiple kinds.Languages: the languages that a font supports.Design Style: similar to Style Name but with more specific options (e.g., sans-serif).
- To add more conditions, click the plus sign.
- Conditions can be either additive (e.g., “contains”) or subtractive (e..g, “does not contain”). Adding more will give you fewer fonts in your smart collection.,
- Click OK to create the smart collection.
- To edit the conditions for a smart collection, right-click it and select Edit Smart Collection.
- You can also use this menu to rename your collection, disable it, delete it, or create a new one.
How to Enable and Disable Fonts
If you have a large number of fonts installed, the font list in some applications can get pretty long and unwieldy. If you’re an inveterate collector of fonts, the idea of deleting fonts may not be appealing, but there is a compromise. You can use Font Book to disable fonts, so they don’t show up in font lists, but still keep them installed, so you can enable and use them whenever you want. Chances are, you only use a relatively small number of fonts, but it’s nice to keep them around, just in case.
Open the File menu and click New Smart Collection.
Type a name for the collection in the text box.
Set conditions for Font Book to add typefaces to this collection. Your options are:
- Family Name: the name of the font (e.g., Helvetica, Palatino).Style Name: the version of the family (e.g., Condensed).PostScript Name: a variation of a font’s full name that you can find by selecting a font and pressing Command+I. An example of a PostScript name is “NuevaStd-Cond,” which is an abbreviation of “Nueva Std Condensed.“Kind: the file type of the font. Examples are TrueType, OpenType, and PostScript. A single font can fall under multiple kinds.Languages: the languages that a font supports.Design Style: similar to Style Name but with more specific options (e.g., sans-serif).
To add more conditions, click the plus sign.
Conditions can be either additive (e.g., “contains”) or subtractive (e..g, “does not contain”). Adding more will give you fewer fonts in your smart collection.,
Click OK to create the smart collection.
To edit the conditions for a smart collection, right-click it and select Edit Smart Collection.
You can also use this menu to rename your collection, disable it, delete it, or create a new one.
To disable (turn off) a font, launch Font Book, right-click its name and select Disable from the menu. To remove it entirely, choose Remove.
You can also disable an entire collection of fonts, which is another reason to organize your fonts in collections. For example, you might create Halloween and Christmas font collections, enable them during the holiday season, and then disable them for the rest of the year. Or, you might create a collection of script/handwriting fonts that you turn on when you need it for a special project, and then turn off again.
You can disable multiple fonts simultaneously by selecting the fonts and then selecting Disable Fonts from the Edit menu.
In addition to using Font Book to manage your fonts, you can also use it to preview fonts and print font samples.
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