Hello! I have folders and folders of OLD fonts. Postscript Type 1 and True Type. I'm pretty sure the new Mac OS and Adobe apps don't support these. I'd love to simplify! Is there a Font App that can do a search of your hard drive to find outdated fonts? And delete them? Any thoughts?
Honestly, I avoid Spotlight like the plague. Mainly because I have no need to search articles for phrases as a writer would. I look for files and folders, which the free EasyFind works great at. But, it useless when searching for Type attributes. Which is why I used the Find box.
I'm not even sure what search bar you're looking at.
Let's start over.
Type 1 PostScript is dead, and you can find them with Spotlight.
From the desktop (Finder) press Command+F . In the Search for: field, type lwfn .
The result will show every Type 1 PostScript outline font on all mounted drives. Such as this, where I only have a few.
Some of the results are obviously text or PDF files that simply have the text string lwfn in them. I know the first four shown here are T1 PS fonts, but don't know why they show as Unix and unknown file types.
But you can right click on any font item and choose Show in Enclosing Folder. Whatever opens will have at least two items in it. The T1 PS outline font shown in the results, and its matching suitcase of screen fonts, which is erroneously listed as a TrueType font.
The entire folder shown here can be deleted.
TrueType fonts are still okay. Even ancient ones. I have a set of TrueType fonts I purchased at the time Windows 3.1 was new in early 1992. I can still use them. Mac legacy TrueType suitcase fonts still do work. The system shows them with a Unix executable icon, while at the same type correctly marking the Kind as TrueType.
How long will these old, non-Unicode fonts continue to be supported? Unknown.
Thanks! Great solution. I'm a little unsure how to do the search. When I do "Command-f" I see this (attached).
Are you saying I should type "field, type lwfn" into the search window? OR am I looking for a dropdown where I can enter "field" ??
Just trying to restore your faith in Spotlight… 😆
Turns out I didn't have any fonts installed that responded to kind:lwfn but the kind:postscript or kind:"type 1" found all Type 1 fonts including a single font icon with LWFN stamped on it. Even OpenType Postscript fonts were found.
Once open, you can view all installed fonts, check for duplicates, and disable fonts you no longer want. Although it doesn’t specifically “search” for outdated fonts, it allows you to see which fonts may not be active or are considered duplicates.
Sorry again! (I should know this). Do you mean this search bar at the upper right of each finder window?
Nice tip! Though kind:lwfn worked better as it returned some T1 PS fonts kind:postscript didn't. Either was better in that they didn't include items that weren't fonts.
Hmm, not sure why you're not seeing the search bar. Try pressing Command+F again while the Spotlight window is active.
Spotlight, whether in the Terminal search field or the menu bar, 🔍 invocation accepts:
kind:postscript
I found ten Postscript Type 1 fonts using that approach and then removed them.
Locating out-of-date fonts on computer