Suitcase Font Manager Mac Free
- Suitcase Font Manager Mac Free Download
- Suitcase Fusion 6 For Mac
- Suitcase Fusion
- Suitcase Font Manager Mac Free Download
The font manager that upgrades your design workflow. For seasoned typographers, or designers just starting out, FontExplorer® X is a macOS app featuring AI-powered font organization and smart workflow automations that save you valuable design time. Download a 30-day free trial. FontExplorer X® is the simple, speedy way to find and organize. The Font Manager With Seamless Integrations. Suitcase Fusion is a flexible font manager for Mac and Windows operating systems, and it works with the creative applications you use every day. Powerful plugins that let you use your font library to its full potential in Adobe Creative Cloud and Sketch. Drag-and-drop support for Affinity products. 2) System Fonts. Fonts located in the system font folder are typically active by default. Similar to the duplicate font issue, if a font with the same name is activated a font will activate for a brief moment and then deactivate since the system font is already active (and locked). For fonts with the same name, activate only one at a time.
How big is your font collection? If you’ve been busy downloading all the free fonts you can find, or if you’ve invested in some premium typefaces chances are you’ve got hundreds (or thousands!) of font files that are bogging down your system. Font managers are important tools that allow you to activate and deactivate your fonts on the fly, organise your collection into groups, and easily test out multiple typefaces at once to find the perfect choice for your designs. I browsed through graphic design forums and messageboards to find out which font managers were recommended by real professionals. This roundup features the most popular programs for both Windows and Mac, including free and premium apps for you to consider.
What do you want from a font manager?
Aside from the basic function of activating and deactivating fonts, are there any other features you might find useful from a font manager? There’s plenty of lightweight and often free choices, but sometimes the premium apps contain some really handy capabilities that can really benefit design professionals. Grouping, labelling, tagging and organsing your fonts helps you pick out the exact style of typeface that you need from your massive library. Previewing multiple fonts at once with custom wording can really speed up your logo designs by allowing you to visually compare different typefaces. Some font managers even come with Photoshop, Illustrator & InDesign plugins so any required fonts will be automatically activated when they’re needed. These are important features to consider when weighing up the value of the different programs on offer.
Windows Only Font Managers
NexusFont (Free!)
NexusFont is the most commonly recommended font manager for Windows. It’s simple little freeware application that has all the basic functions of activate & deactivating, sorting and searching your collection.
The Font Thing (Free!)
It was made in 1999, but The Font Thing is a tried and tested piece of freeware that is still in service for many designers. It allows you to install, organise, preview and filter your fonts from a lightweight program.
FontBase (Free!)
FontBase is a new font manager for Windows 7 or higher. Unlike many free programs for Windows, this app has a beautiful interface that makes it easy to live edit, style, preview, search and compare your fonts.
AMP Font Viewer (Free!)
AMP Font Viewer is another free option for Windows users. It has many features for installing and categorising your fonts, including temporary installation of fonts so they remain active until the program is closed.
Mac Only Font Managers
RightFont ($39.95)
RightFont is a relatively new font manager for Mac. It helps you preview, sync, and organise fonts stored in any location without installing them, which is great for users with multiple devices. Fonts can also be filtered by classification, width or weight.
FontAgent Pro ($99)
FontAgent Pro is a classic font manager for Mac. It’s quite pricey, but you know you’re getting a tried and tested piece of software with lots of features. FontAgent Pro also comes with auto-activation plugins for the latest versions of Adobe CC and Quark.
Fontyou (Free!)
Fontyou is a new style of cloud based font manager. Rather than import all your fonts from your hard drive and access them via a traditional utility program, you upload your files to the cloud and manage your collections via the browser.
Font Explorer X 1.2.3 (Free!)
Font Explorer X has been my font manager of choice for many years. Originally this was a free version of Font Explorer X Pro, but it has since been removed from the Font Explorer website. Thankfully this handy free version is still accessible via Softpedia.
The Professional’s Choice (Win & Mac)
Suitcase Fusion ($119.95)
Suitcase Font Manager Mac Free Download
Suitcase is the biggest name in the design industry when it comes to managing fonts. At $120 it’s the most expensive program in this roundup, but it’s compatible with all the Adobe Creative Cloud software, QuarkXPress and even basic desktop appplications.
Suitcase Fusion 6 For Mac
FontExplorer X Pro ($99)
FontExplorer X Pro is a comprehensive font manager with a wealth of features. It can also connect to FontExplorer X Server, which provides shared font management between entire teams, making it a great solution for teams and agencies.
ATTENTION macOS Big Sur users: Unfortunately, this article will no longer be of any help to you in paring down your system fonts. With their latest macOS release, Apple has completely removed the ability to delete system fonts. For more information, please click here.
Note: This article has been updated to include new instructions for macOS Catalina users.
Upgrading to the latest Mac operating system certainly has its perks, but one drawback as a professional graphic designer is opening up my favorite Adobe app only to discover an out-of-control font list. What may have once been a carefully curated short list of go-to fonts has now ballooned to monolithic proportions with hundreds of unwanted fonts you would never dare to use even on a bad design day. This can be a real headache, scrolling for days to locate a favorite font that used to be within sight.
If, like me, with every new upgrade you mourn the loss of your curated list, chances are you already have some experience with managing fonts to optimize your workflow. However, with each new macOS upgrade comes the addition of several new fonts that may or may not be system-critical. Case in point was the unveiling of Apple's new system font San Francisco with the release of El Capitan, so it's never been more important to have a trustworthy guide to definitively determine which fonts should stay and which can be safely deactivated or disposed of.
Over the years, I've consistently turned to Kurt Lang's extremely thorough and always up-to-date font management guide for macOS and OS X (Catalina [10.15] all the way back to Panther [10.3]). A thorough scan through his detailed instructions and I was able to restore my font lists to their proper, usable lengths without causing a system crash.
However, with Apple’s latest macOS release, Catalina, there’s now a new wrench thrown in the gears when it comes to deleting system font files. More on that in just a moment…
A couple of quick hints as you get started:
If you've never managed your fonts before (i.e. you just copy all your fonts into your user fonts folder), get a good font manager and use it. I've been an Extensis Suitcase Fusion user for years, but after some major interface design flaws in the last couple of releases (which I reviewed here), I’ve now switched to managing my fonts with Font Explorer X Pro. Whether you use one of these two, Font Book, or another option, just find what works best for you and use it consistently.
It's helpful to know that there are a few main places fonts live on your Mac (the first two contain a mix of system critical fonts and ones that can be safely disposed of, while the last two can be emptied with no adverse effects): (In Catalina, only the first one listed below contains system-critical fonts. Apple has now removed all system fonts from the Macintosh HD > Library > Fonts folder.)
Macintosh HD > System > Library > Fonts
Macintosh HD > Library > Fonts
Macintosh HD > Users > [username] > Library > Fonts
Macintosh HD > Users > [username] > Library > Application Support > Adobe > Fonts
And there are three main players that put fonts in those locations automatically:
Apple
Adobe
Microsoft
IMPORTANT: Before you delete any font files…
If you’re on macOS Mojave (10.14) or earlier, you'll need to temporarily disable a built-in security feature called System Integrity Protection that protects system critical files (like system fonts, for example) from being moved, modified, or deleted by malware. Once you've moved the unnecessary font files from the system folders, be sure to reenable SIP again!
Unfortunately, Apple has made it even harder to delete things from the System folder in macOS Catalina (10.15), and disabling SIP no longer works. The entire System file structure is now on a read-only partition. In Kurt’s guide, he recommends installing Catalina on another drive or partition, but I found that to be more hassle than it’s worth. Instead, I came across this multi-step solution that avoids having to run the OS off of a separate drive and instead makes the read-only partition writable again (that is, until you’re done, then you need to set it to read-only again):
Restart in recovery mode (Command + R) and disable SIP (yes, you still need to do this step to make the following changes)
Do a normal restart and follow the steps in this article to enable the root user on your machine
Log out, then log back in as the root user
Open Terminal and type in “sudo mount -uw /” (no quotes) to enable write access on the system drive until next restart
Delete the unneccesary/unwanted fonts per the instructions below and Kurt’s minimum font list
Log out of root user and back in with your own username
Disable root user
Restart in recovery mode and enable SIP, then restart as normal
I would recommend making an identical copy of each system font folder (the one(s) listed above) and place them where you can easily get to them later (either on your Desktop or in a 'Moved Fonts' folder you create in Documents). For example, I labeled my duplicate folder 'Catalina System Fonts'. If something would happen to go wrong, you should be able to copy whichever missing font is causing the issue back into its original folder.
Secondly, ensure you DO NOT delete the following system critical fonts, or your Mac may not boot or display OS menus properly (there are more that you'll need to keep onboard, but these are the absolute most critical):
Any San Francisco font (Apple's current de facto system font family)
Any Helvetica or Helvetica Neue font (Apple's system font in OS X Yosemite)
Lucida Grande (Apple's legacy system font in OS X Mavericks and previous)
LastResort.ttf (as the name implies, this is the font that will display when no other required fonts are available)
Follow Kurt's instructions closely on which fonts to keep and which to delete from the 'System > Library > Fonts' folder (and 'Library > Fonts' folder, if on Mojave or previous). However, you may want to keep a few more than he recommends. For instance, you may want to keep…
Any fonts you would see yourself using in your design work (e.g. Didot, Palatino, etc.), unless you already have an appropriate Postscript or OpenType replacement for them, which I recommend
Myriad Pro family, as this used to be a required font for Adobe Creative Suite (CS) applications and may still be regarded as the default for Creative Cloud (CC) apps
Fonts used by other applications like iWork and Microsoft Office (see sections in the font management guide detailing each of these)
Once you've cleaned up your font folders according to the minimum specifications and to your liking, you should notice a vastly improved workflow when searching for fonts in your design programs, less font conflicts, and possibly a faster machine all around.
Suitcase Fusion
Did you find this to be helpful? What are some of your font management best practices? Let me know in the comments section below.