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You can install fonts by copying them them to ~/Library/Fonts but macOS fails to follow them when they are symbolic links. Is there a way to make this work with symlinks?

Mili
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1 Answers1

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Yes, you can still install fonts by moving or copying them into the user's Library/Fonts folder, without needing to use Font Book.app.

They can even be inside subfolders, if you want to organize them.

Rebooting should not be necessary, though most apps will need to relaunch to update their font menus.

No, symbolic links to other locations won’t work.

macOS supports most modern font formats: ttf, ttc, otf, dfont. Apple described Type 1 PostScript fonts as 'legacy', which should be a warning that support will be removed at some point.

benwiggy
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  • Hardlinks obviously will work, but require the font library directory to be in the same partition as the hard-linked files. Wonder whether Finder aliases would work. – nohillside Sep 05 '22 at 13:09
  • Are finder aliases different than UNIX symbolic links? I'm basically trying to make sure that the fonts in my dotfiles are reconginsed in both Linux and macOS installations. I'm using GNU stow to create all symlinks and I don't think stow has an option to create hard links. – Mili Sep 05 '22 at 13:53
  • @Mili One of the fascinating things on AD (and probably SE in general) is how answers to a broad question can help to shape it better (so maybe another question edit is required). And yes, symlinks are completely different from Finder aliases. – nohillside Sep 05 '22 at 14:19
  • @Mili Having said: Personally I think keeping dotfiles working for different environments only works if these environments are similar enough. For cross-plattform situations (like Linux and macOS), a deployment-style approach often works better (where the deployment script takes care of plattform differences like shebangs, font locations etc). – nohillside Sep 05 '22 at 14:21
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    @Mili You might be better off using a font manager that enables fonts from any location (presumably these exist for Linux?) and then store the fonts in a central location outside a User folder. – benwiggy Sep 05 '22 at 14:33
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    Using symlinks used to work fine! I'm not sure when they stopped working. Sheesh... Now I will need to copy fonts and waste space. – Herb Schulz Jul 21 '23 at 16:50
  • @HerbSchulz You shouldn't "need" to copy fonts at all. Perhaps ask a question about your workflow and the best way to manage it. – benwiggy Jul 21 '23 at 17:26
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    @benwiggy : TeX Live, as installed by MacTeX, has a large nuber of opentype fonts. These are already available by file name within TeX but they are in a non-standard font location as far as MacOS is concerned. I used to jsut have a symlink of the folder holding these fonts in ~/Library/Fonts and it worked fine. All of a sudden it has stopped working. – Herb Schulz Jul 22 '23 at 18:38