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The awesome Mac OS Catalina fonts you didn’t know you had access to

Ralf Herrmann


Apple has recently licensed fonts from type foundries such as Commercial Type, Klim Type Foundry and Mark Simonson Studio to be used as system fonts on Mac OS Catalina. But since these fonts are an optional download, many users of Mac OS X are not even aware they have access to them for free.

To see and install these optional fonts, open the FontBook application and switch to “All Fonts”. Browse the font list and you will see lots of font families that are greyed out—either because they were deactivated or they weren’t downloaded yet. If you right-click on a font or font family that wasn’t downloaded yet, you see an option to download the individual font or entire family. 

catalinafonts.png

Here are some (Latin) highlights of the available fonts:

catalino-optional-fonts2.jpg

In addition to those Latin fonts, many non-latin fonts are available as well. For a complete list check out this support document. 
☞ https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210192




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I didn't know this feature existed on Font Book, it is a welcome surprise after about 20 years using Mac OS X. It may be a small incentive to upgrade to Catalina. I have an iMac with Mojave and one with Catalina. I was not able to see these fonts in Mojave, but the option to download them is in Catalina through Font Book. I did not see mentioned another font which I already downloaded, Spot Mono (3 weights) https://www.schick-toikka.com/spot-mono It may not be as significant as some of these broad multi-family sets, but it's a nice addition. All these fonts are in TrueType Collections (TTC) which allow multiple font weights to be contained into one file, I think most OS X versions can handle TTC fonts.

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That sounds amazing but for some reason I can't see those fonts. I go to the All fonts tab and scan the list alphabetically, using search bar at the top doesn't help with finding any of the listed fonts neither. I am using Catalina, any ideas why?

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oops never mind, I didnt realise how recent the update was and that I have installed the new version yet. It works now!

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1 hour ago, Jen said:

I love this, but the only greyed out fonts that are showing are foreign characters/fonts. Any idea how to fix this?

So you are using Catalina, i.e. 10.15? It won’t work on older version. 

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On 5/27/2020 at 4:34 AM, Soren Severin said:

Great, but what about license details – what kind of usage is permitted? I can't seem to find any EULAs anywhere. Is it for instance permitted to use the fonts to create brand marks – that might be copyrighted? Does anybody know where to find legal information about usage rights?

Legal restrictions only apply to transmission of the font files themselves, not the letterforms they define (which cannot be copyrighted). You do not need to transmit an entire font file to any service bureau to print a logo, you just expand it. You might want to transmit an entire font file to a service bureau to print a book because expanding large volumes of text is impractical. You have to transmit an entire font file to everyone in the world if you want to render it on a web page and this is the main thing that these agreements want to prohibit.

Typefaces are not stock photography. The price you pay has nothing to do with usage. 

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On 5/26/2020 at 10:20 AM, garrettstoffel said:

I can find every font listed except Proxima Nova. And thats the one that I got excited for. 

I too have everything but Proxima Nova — that is, I was able to download all the others listed, but Proxima Nova isn't even in the list in Font Book to download. . And I swear I had it at one point. Is there a way to reset or otherwise download directly from somewhere? 

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