Want to remove noto fonts (split)

[v_kyr]

21 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Thanks, but this font management article is for Big Sur & later ...

But this does not work for required fonts unless I disable SIP, which I am not willing to do.

But the initial by me referenced article link (aka Big Sur & later), also tells you ...

Quote

Font Book allows the user to disable far more unnecessary fonts than Big Sur did. Except for the highly annoying, and ridiculous number of Noto Sans fonts. Per the usual since Catalina, Font Book doesn’t even list these active fonts, much less let you control them. Owners of Rightfont, Typeface, Connect Fonts and FontAgent can disable the Supplemental folder fonts with these font managers.

... so that's why I suggested to try out with a RightFont trial!

[lacerto]

On 12/15/2022 at 9:50 PM, PixelPest said:

The difference between used macOS API and self-made font management:

As an ignorant Apple user, did I accidentally touch myself?

The problem appears to be OS dependent in a way that the result of an API call for available (installed) fonts varies according to user/OS history. 

[v_kyr]

I would suggest MacOS users to best read through (from top to bottom) of ...

• Font Management in macOS, by Kurt Lang

... in order to get a better overall understanding of what has changed in terms of Font Management between the different MacOS releases.

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, v_kyr said:

I would suggest MacOS users to best read through (from top to bottom) of ...

• Font Management in macOS, by Kurt Lang

... in order to get a better overall understanding of what has changed in terms of Font Management between the different MacOS releases.

My simplistic takeaway from that is the 5 'required' Noto font families can't be disabled even with the help of 3rd party apps. Is that right?

[lacerto]

On 12/17/2022 at 5:40 AM, R C-R said:

My simplistic takeaway from that is the 5 'required' Noto font families can't be disabled even with the help of 3rd party apps. Is that right?

I do not know; probably there is a way but I have no idea how deep you need to go to crack the system behavior, and as the problem is fixed (for me at least), and I only get the designed minimum of five Notos now in Affinity apps, I am not interested in going further. 

It was late, and I expressed myself poorly above. I meant to say that I think that the problems related to Noto (or things like not being able to show  e.g. Seravek and other so called Document support fonts available publicly in earlier OS versions), are, IMO, not results of Serif doing anything their own way.

 I think that this behavior is “by design” of Apple, and dependent on OS and user history, but just backfires, and as is typical, the (l)user “does not need to” [= cannot] be directly in charge, to be able to easily correct the problem. Accordingly, that the OS suddenly starts to behave in a way the user wants to, and apps start to show plain vanilla OS font enumerations without burden of history, is a kind of a miracle, caused by playing around a while in great wise Font Book. I mean: I did not do anything at all in Affinity apps, or even in Finder, to get it work.

The “own font management” kinds of solutions that we see e.g. in VectorStyler and Adobe apps, are results of apps deliberately enumerating fonts hidden by the OS. In these apps, it also means that you get the long Noto lists (unless you choose to create your own lists and hide them)--  and still fully expectedly continue to get them after doing something like I did in Font Book to get plain vanilla lists shown in all Affinity apps -- but also that you get fonts like Seravek, even if you do not have history of using these fonts earlier in these apps, or documents created by them.

I may of course be totally wrong, and just do not understand how the OS is designed to work. But this  thread (and this is not the only one related to listing of macOS system or hidden fonts) shows that I am not the only ignorant user who feels frustrated.
 

[v_kyr]

9 hours ago, R C-R said:

My simplistic takeaway from that is the 5 'required' Noto font families can't be disabled even with the help of 3rd party apps. Is that right?

It depends highly on the used MacOS version, since Apple continiously changed the security levels and APIs in their OS'es.

For example in MacOS Ventura things are restricted much more now here and even third party font managers (...which used Apple's APIs to disable/remove fonts etc.) can't perform such tasks any longer. See therefor and read also the Typeface help tip here.

In contrast to MacOS Ventura under MacOS Montery you can with third party font managers (aka RightFont, Typeface, Connect Fonts and FontAgent) disable the Supplemental folder fonts and thus the Noto Sans fonts.

Under MacOS BigSur security has taken an even bigger step than before, its's a Signed System Volume, much like iOS. You can’t view a Big Sur drive in any meaningful way from Catalina or older MacOS'es. Big Sur hides more fonts, like the 101 Noto Sans fonts in the Supplemental folder. Not only can’t you remove any fonts in Big Sur, Font Book doesn’t even list them all. Those fonts in the /System/Library/Fonts/Supplemental/ folder are supplemental and one should be able to disable all of those, but you can’t with Font Book. - But nearly all third party font managers (RightFont, Typeface, Connect Fonts and FontAgent) now have that ability.

For MacOS Catalina you have to see if the Noto Sans fonts do reside in the /System/Library/Fonts/Supplemental/ folder. If yes then third party managers (aka RightFont, Typeface, Connect Fonts and FontAgent) can probably disable those, give it a try with some trial version of RightFont or Typeface.

[kenmcd]

10 hours ago, R C-R said:

My simplistic takeaway from that is the 5 'required' Noto font families can't be disabled even with the help of 3rd party apps. Is that right?

Yes.

[R C-R]

3 hours ago, v_kyr said:

In contrast to MacOS Ventura under MacOS Montery you can with third party font managers (aka RightFont, Typeface, Connect Fonts and FontAgent) disable the Supplemental folder fonts and thus the Noto Sans fonts.

What I meant by the 5 'required' Noto font families is the 5 that are not in the /System/Library/Fonts/Supplemental/ folder (at least on my Mac running Catalina) but in /System/Library/Fonts/.

On Catalina, I can disable the other ones using Font Book.

[v_kyr]

51 minutes ago, R C-R said:

What I meant by the 5 'required' Noto font families is the 5 that are not in the /System/Library/Fonts/Supplemental/ folder (at least on my Mac running Catalina) but in /System/Library/Fonts/.

You can't and shouldn't for fonts which do reside in /System/Library/Fonts/, since those are (...as their storage location already indicates) needed there by the OS system for certain localized apps, like the Safari webbrowser etc., which do rely on finding and using them. Thus strict system relevant fonts do reside there under Catalina and are prohibited from disabling/removing. - In newer MacOS versions (BigSur, Monterey) this has been softened and then tightened again in Ventura!

[R C-R]

40 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

You can't and shouldn't for fonts which do reside in /System/Library/Fonts/ ...

The point I was trying to make is that at least for Catalina, no third party add ons are needed to disable the Noto fonts that are not in /System/Library/Fonts because that can be done with Font Book.

[v_kyr]

36 minutes ago, R C-R said:

The point I was trying to make is that at least for Catalina, no third party add ons are needed to disable the Noto fonts that are not in /System/Library/Fonts because that can be done with Font Book.

But which contradicts this statement here ...

Quote

...

Monterey Font Book allows the user to disable far more unnecessary fonts than Big Sur did. Almost to the same point as using Font Menu Cleaner (discontinued). Except for the highly annoying, and ridiculous number of Noto Sans fonts. Per the usual since Catalina, Font Book doesn’t even list these fonts, much less let you control them. Owners of Connect Fonts, Rightfont, Typeface and FontAgent can disable the Supplemental folder fonts with these font managers.

...

 

[R C-R]

20 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

But which contradicts this statement here ...

Nevertheless, there are still some Noto fonts I can disable in Font Book like the entire Noto Serif Kannada family (which oddly in Font Book's Info panel no location is listed) & Noto Sans Javanese Regular, which is shown as being in /System/Library/Fonts/Supplemental/:

Go figure....

  

[v_kyr]

9 minutes ago, R C-R said:

Nevertheless, there are still some Noto fonts I can disable in Font Book like the entire Noto Serif Kannada family ...

As far as those then are really disabled under Catalina and so won't show up any longer in Affinity and other common apps, fine!

[R C-R]

10 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

As far as those then are really disabled under Catalina and so won't show up any longer in Affinity and other common apps, fine!

They don't show up in Affinity if disabled in Font Book.

[kenmcd]

1 hour ago, R C-R said:

Noto Serif Kannada family (which oddly in Font Book's Info panel no location is listed)

That font family is one of about 147 font files (.otf,.ttc,.ttf) in sub-folders of
/System/Library/AssetsV2/com_apple_MobileAsset_Font7/
on Ventura
or possibly
/System/Library/AssetsV2/com_apple_MobileAsset_Font6/
on some older systems.

NotoSerifKannada.ttc  is in the
/ce3ca7cc88974b63ce2a6cda076d9974eff41c2e.asset/AssetData/
sub-folder on Ventura.

 

[loukash]

Being annoyed as much as the next guy, I also say it out loud: No to Noto and I'm proud!

So… on Catalina, I went the most straightforward route and followed this advice from Apple forums:

1. Booted from another partition (Mojave in my case, but it can also be an external bootable drive with either Mojave or Catalina, likely also BS and up)
2. Logged in as Root user (makes everything even more straightforward and a no-brainer if you know what you're doing)
3. Copied all Notos from Catalina's /System/Library/Fonts/Supplemental elsewhere as a backup
4. Deleted them from /System/Library/Fonts/Supplemental

Not sure if all this also requires to have SIP disabled. My SIP is always off anyway. (Thanks, Apple, for babysitting, but I'm mature enough to take the full responsibility for everything I might be effin' up!)

The only Notos left in Affinity menus are now the required ones.

(Disclaimer as usual: Kids, don't try this at home on your daddy's computer!)

[loukash]

Speaking of which, on Catalina there are a few other "supplemental" fonts that cannot be disabled in Font Book, and which you may also want to delete (and back up) the "hard way":

• Athelas.ttc
• Iowan Old Style.ttc
• Marion.ttc
• Seravek.ttc
• SuperClarendon.ttc

[v_kyr]

1 hour ago, loukash said:

So… on Catalina, I went the most straightforward route and followed

All that and much more is already described in "Font Management in macOS, by Kurt Lang (... this link is to the older doc incl. Catalina", you also can download a PDF version of that article from here)!

For the latest, updated version of that article see "Font Management in macOS, by Kurt Lang (which is last updated December 17, 2022)" and it's PDF-version here.

[loukash]

2 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

All that and much more is already described in

Yeah. TL;DR…  
Hence my "compacted version for the intrepid explorers".
But thanks for the links!

[loukash]

45 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

"Font Management in macOS, by Kurt Lang (... this link is to the older doc incl. Catalina"

Alright, while actually reading it, I found this interesting note:

Quote

FontBase doesn’t even bother to show you the system fonts, but you can add the Supplemental folder as a set. You can then deactivate these fonts. However, it doesn’t work properly. If for example you disable the entire set, a lot of these fonts do disappear from your font lists, but not all of them. It does at least kill those annoying Noto Sans fonts. So, FontBase gets a partial pat on the head for doing a partial job.

As a FontBase (free) user on Catalina (sorely missing FEX 4 free version that I have on El Capitan), I already noticed that it can activate all those supplemental Notos that I've moved to a backup folder. However, FontBase cannot see the "other weird five" (also explicitly mentioned by Lang) noted above. 

[R C-R]

4 hours ago, loukash said:

So… on Catalina, I went the most straightforward route and followed this advice from Apple forums:

1. Booted from another partition (Mojave in my case, but it can also be an external bootable drive with either Mojave or Catalina, likely also BS and up)
2. Logged in as Root user (makes everything even more straightforward and a no-brainer if you know what you're doing)
3. Copied all Notos from Catalina's /System/Library/Fonts/Supplemental elsewhere as a backup
4. Deleted them from /System/Library/Fonts/Supplemental

As I have mentioned earlier, on my Mac running Catalina, I can disable the (few) Noto fonts in /System/Library/Fonts/Supplemental that otherwise would show up in Affinity (e.g. Noto Sans Javanese & the Noto Serif Kannada family) in Font Book. It is the 'required' ones in /System/Library/Fonts/ that I can't disable.

So for the ones in supplemental, there is no need to do any of the above.

In fact, there are 62 Noto typefaces in /System/Library/Fonts/Supplemental, most of which do not appear anywhere in font lists in Font Book or the Affinity apps. FWIW, they are as follows:

NotoSerifBalinese-Regular.ttf

NotoSansAvestan-Regular.ttf

NotoSansBamum-Regular.ttf

NotoSansBatak-Regular.ttf

NotoSansBrahmi-Regular.ttf

NotoSansBuginese-Regular.ttf

NotoSansBuhid-Regular.ttf

NotoSansCarian-Regular.ttf

NotoSansChakma-Regular.ttf

NotoSansCham-Regular.ttf

NotoSansCoptic-Regular.ttf

NotoSansCuneiform-Regular.ttf

NotoSansCypriot-Regular.ttf

NotoSansEgyptianHieroglyphs-Regular.ttf

NotoSansGlagolitic-Regular.ttf

NotoSansGothic-Regular.ttf

NotoSansHanunoo-Regular.ttf

NotoSansImperialAramaic-Regular.ttf

NotoSansInscriptionalPahlavi-Regular.ttf

NotoSansInscriptionalParthian-Regular.ttf

NotoSansJavanese-Regular.otf

NotoSansKaithi-Regular.ttf

NotoSansKayahLi-Regular.ttf

NotoSansKharoshthi-Regular.ttf

NotoSansLepcha-Regular.ttf

NotoSansLimbu-Regular.ttf

NotoSansLinearB-Regular.ttf

NotoSansLisu-Regular.ttf

NotoSansLycian-Regular.ttf

NotoSansLydian-Regular.ttf

NotoSansMandaic-Regular.ttf

NotoSansMeeteiMayek-Regular.ttf

NotoSansMongolian-Regular.ttf

NotoSansNewTaiLue-Regular.ttf

NotoSansNKo-Regular.ttf

NotoSansOgham-Regular.ttf

NotoSansOlChiki-Regular.ttf

NotoSansOldItalic-Regular.ttf

NotoSansOldPersian-Regular.ttf

NotoSansOldSouthArabian-Regular.ttf

NotoSansOldTurkic-Regular.ttf

NotoSansOsmanya-Regular.ttf

NotoSansPhagsPa-Regular.ttf

NotoSansPhoenician-Regular.ttf

NotoSansRejang-Regular.ttf

NotoSansRunic-Regular.ttf

NotoSansSamaritan-Regular.ttf

NotoSansSaurashtra-Regular.ttf

NotoSansShavian-Regular.ttf

NotoSansSundanese-Regular.ttf

NotoSansSylotiNagri-Regular.ttf

NotoSansSyriac-Regular.ttf

NotoSansTagalog-Regular.ttf

NotoSansTagbanwa-Regular.ttf

NotoSansTaiLe-Regular.ttf

NotoSansTaiTham-Regular.ttf

NotoSansTaiViet-Regular.ttf

NotoSansThaana-Regular.ttf

NotoSansTifinagh-Regular.ttf

NotoSansUgaritic-Regular.ttf

NotoSansVai-Regular.ttf

NotoSansYi-Regular.ttf

[loukash]

2 minutes ago, R C-R said:

there are 62 Noto typefaces in /System/Library/Fonts/Supplemental, most of which do not appear anywhere in font lists in Font Book or the Affinity apps.

Well, quite a big bunch of those were appearing in my Affinity font list on Catalina, but none of them was in the Font Book.
So… your mileage does vary, as it seems.

[R C-R]

4 minutes ago, loukash said:

Well, quite a big bunch of those were appearing in my Affinity font list on Catalina, but none of them was in the Font Book.
So… your mileage does vary, as it seems.

I think I already posted this but what I get in Affinity for the Noto families:

[twojtyniak]

In MacOS Designer v2.0.4 disabled fonts (per Font Book) show up as available. Can anyone corroborate this behavior?

While I recognize that the OS no longer allows removal or even disabling of some fonts, I would expect disabled fonts to not show up in the app.

[ashf]

Is there an easy way to disable Notos in Ventura or later now?