Mail is unreadable after installing Tahoe.

Question

Level 1

13 points

Mail is unreadable after installing Tahoe.

Hello,

After installing Tahoe, emails display unreadable text in the form of Helvetica Fractions instead of a standard readable font. This mainly occurs with regular emails, but not with marketing or HTML emails—though those are occasionally affected as well.

Additionally, when composing a new email, the editor automatically switches to Helvetica Fractions, and it is not possible to change the font or switch to another Helvetica typeface.

Could you advise on how to resolve this issue?

Thank you,

L.W

MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 26.0

Posted on Sep 25, 2025 7:19 AM

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Answer 1

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

121,998 points

Sep 26, 2025 2:35 AM in response to Flyingmoody

Open the Font Book app and go to settings > advanced and Reset Fonts.

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Answer 2

Tom Gewecke

Level 10

121,998 points

Oct 30, 2025 5:17 AM in response to Flyingmoody

Flyingmoody wrote:

And once again. After a normal restart the problem was back again... I have more important stuff to do.

Is it still Helvetica Fractions that is appearing instead of a normal font? Have you tried removing that one totally from your machine? I doubt it is necessary for anything these days.

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Answer 3

Flyingmoody Author

Level 1

13 points

Sep 29, 2025 11:18 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

Yes thanks!, it eventually worked out.

But I also had to reinstall all my fonts after the reset. That was actually not that difficult (just putting them back to the ”fresh” font folder) but Im lucky I did a copy of my font folder before reset. The system created a folder, Font (removed) but It didn’t bring all the removed fonts. It was many hundreds missing. So copy the font folder before resetting people.

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Answer 4

Flyingmoody Author

Level 1

13 points

Oct 7, 2025 5:57 AM in response to Flyingmoody

Heads up! After the new update 26.0.1 the problem is back again 😖

I was thinking it would fix the bugg but nope. Back to reset fonts...

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Answer 5

Guitartist

Level 4

1,204 points

Sep 29, 2025 2:01 PM in response to Flyingmoody

I'm experiencing similar, but I'm seeing Helvetica Ultra Compressed, which is bold and only readable if I enlarge the text quite a bit. And when I try to switch from this back to Helvetica Regular when composing an e-mail, it switches to Times instead. I just tried sending an e-mail to myself in Helvetica Neue Regular, which seemed to work properly and displayed properly when I recieved it.

Also, all of my past e-mails are displayed in the Ultra Compressed font except for one family member's that displays normally for some reason.

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