Gadgetwise: Q&A: Pruning the Mac’s Font Collection

I’d like to weed out a bunch of unused fonts on my Mac OS X Lion computer. How do I safely delete them?

One way to remove unwanted fonts from Mac OS X (versions 10.5 and later, which includes the Lion 10.7 system), is to use the built-in Font Book program. Note that you cannot remove fonts that the Mac itself uses in the operating system. To get started, click the Mac desktop to switch to the Finder, click Go in the Mac’s menu bar and select Applications. (When you are in the Finder, you can also press Shift-Command-A on the keyboard to automatically open the Applications folder.)

Once inside the Mac’s Applications folder, open the Font Book app. In the program’s main window, click All Fonts in the far left column. In the Fonts column next to it, locate the name of the typeface you wish to remove and select it. Go to the File menu at the top of the screen and choose the option to remove that font family from the computer.

The Font Book program lets you view, organize and temporarily disable fonts on the Mac as well. Apple has a guide to using Font Book here.