Fonts keep disappearing | MacOS Sequoia - M4 Pro

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Level 1

4 points

Fonts keep disappearing | MacOS Sequoia - M4 Pro

Hi everyone,

I recently switched to a MacBook (Apple M4 Pro, macOS Sequoia) and have been running into a serious font issue.

Fonts that I’ve already installed, and can see in Font Book and FontBase, keep disappearing from both Figma and Adobe Illustrator. Even fonts I used in past projects suddenly show as missing when I reopen the file. Reinstalling them only works temporarily.

Here’s my setup:

macOS Sequoia (latest update)
Apps affected: Figma (desktop), Adobe Illustrator
Font managers: Font Book, FontBase, Adobe Creative Cloud (for Adobe Fonts)

I’ve tried:

Restarting both apps and the Mac
Re-enabling fonts in FontBase and Font Book
Clearing temporary font caches

But the issue still happens, it never occurred on my previous Intel Mac running Ventura.

Does anyone know how to fix this issue? This is affecting my workflow and I haven’t been able to contact Apple Support yet.

Photo: Missing font in Figma

Thanks so much,

Xuan

MacBook Pro 14″, macOS 15.6

Posted on Nov 2, 2025 8:27 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Kurt Lang

Level 9

68,448 points

Nov 3, 2025 8:07 AM in response to xuanphan

Never, ever, use more than one font manager at a time. That's just asking for these kinds of problems (on a personal note, you couldn't pay me to use FontBase).

Close FontBase. Then follow these steps to completely clear Font Book, with the assumption you prefer to use FontBase.

1) Open Font Book's preferences (Settings). Click on the Advanced tab, click the red Reset Fonts button, the Proceed button, and enter your admin password. Close Font Book.

2) Open the Preferences folder in your user account and put the following file in the trash.

com.apple.FontRegistry.user.plist

The file com.apple.FontRegistry.user.plist is how Font Book keeps track of fonts it has deactivated.

3) Open Terminal in the /Applications/Utilities folder and enter the following command:

atsutil databases -removeUser

This removes all font cache files of the currently logged in user account.

4) For Apple Silicon Macs: Shut the Mac down. Press and hold the power button. When the boot manager appears, you can release the power button and you’ll see the startup drives you can choose from. Press the Shift key and Safe Mode will appear under your choices. Continue holding the Shift key and double click the drive you want to startup to.

Let the Mac finish booting to the desktop and then restart normally. This will clear the remainder of Font Book’s database and the cache files it uses for the user account you logged into in Safe Mode.

Now, never touch Font Book again. Also make sure it doesn't open on its own by assigning the various font types to FontBase, which only understands very old TrueType fonts and OpenType.

Highlight each font type and do a Get Info. Change the Open with drop-down menu to FontBase. Then click the Change All button. Confirm. This will prevent Font Book from opening if you double click a font from the Finder. It will instead launch FontBase.

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