How to Remove Helvetica Neue
An ongoing annoyance with Mac OS X 10.5 and 10.6 is their requirement that the font Helvetica Neue be active. Because of this, font managers such as FontExplorer, Suitcase or FontAgent won’t let you activate any other version of Helvetica Neue — such as the one you need because it was used in a previous project!
Therefore it may seem impossible to replace it with your own version, but here’s a trick that works:
- Quit any font managers that may be running (FontExplorer, Suitcase, FontAgent, etc.).
- Go to /System/Library/Fonts/ and copy all the Helveticas you find there to /Library/Fonts/
- Delete them from /System/Library/Fonts/ (admin password needed)
Because the Helveticas are no longer in the “System” fonts folder, but are in the “all-users” fonts folder, your font manager should now let you deactivate any of those Helveticas and activate your own versions.
Jay Nelson is the editorial director of PlanetQuark.com, and the editor and publisher of Design Tools Monthly. He’s also the author of the QuarkXPress 8 and QuarkXPress 7 training titles at Lynda.com, as well as the training videos Quark includes in the box with QuarkXPress 7 . In addition, Jay writes regularly for Macworld and Photoshop User magazines and speaks at industry events.
If you remove Helvetica Neue from the system folder, you will run into other problems with other applications! You are not supposed to touch fonts in the system folder because doing so may make the system unstable.
Hi Erik.
Well, kinda sorta. The problem comes in when you have an older project that used a different version of Helvetica Neue than the one that’s glued to Apple’s OS. Sometimes, no matter what you do, you can’t get QuarkXPress (or other applications) to recognize your preferred version of Helvetica Neue as long as Apple’s is active. The only solution is to replace Apple’s Helvetica Neue with your own. Ideally, you’d only activate “your” Helvetica Neue for as long as you need it, then re-activate Apple’s version.
So yes, your point is well taken. And sometimes you just have to get out the heavy iron when there’s no other alternative. At least, that’s my take. :-)
I agree with Jay on this one. It’s true that moving Helvetica Neue can cause system problems, but when you’re under deadline and don’t have a choice, it’s been known to save my bacon. I’ve generally used this trick just long enough to change Neue to a different font in the document, and then I put everything back the way it was.