Installing macOS-specific add-on fonts

^{By Ronald Tse and Alexey Morozov on 11 Feb 2022Last updated 02 Mar 2024}

Fontist now allows installing macOS-specific add-on fonts via the fontist command-line interface.

Introduction

macOS comes with an amazingly beautiful set of fonts. These fonts typically require commercial licenses to be used on other platforms, so macOS makes good on the Apple reputation that design comes essential and affordable.

Designers using Apple products often rely on Apple supplied typefaces, some of the commonly used fonts include:

• Avenir Next
• Canela
• Futura
• Georgia
• Palatino

Available fonts on macOS systems

Since macOS 11 (Big Sur), the font list provided by macOS grew sufficiently large that many fonts are now downloaded upon demand. macOS fonts are now distributed in one of these two ways:

• supplied by the default installation
• downloadable on demand

In fact, macOS Font Book supports removal of the supplied fonts to be installed on demand after a font is manually removed, so all fonts are technically available to the system at any time.

The full list of available fonts on various macOS versions can be found on the Apple Support site:

• Fonts in macOS 14 Sonoma
• Fonts in macOS 13 Ventura
• Fonts in macOS 12 Monteray
• Fonts in macOS 11 Big Sur

Installing macOS fonts

Fontist makes it possible for the user to bypass the macOS Font Book UI and installing these specially licensed fonts in a continuous integration (CI) manner on macOS environments.

Here's how to install macOS fonts through Fontist.

First update the collection of Fontist font formulas using the fontist update command:

$ fontist update
Formulas have been successfully updated.

Now individual fonts can be installed by referring to their font names:

$ fontist install "Canela"
...
Font "Canela" not found locally.
FONT LICENSE ACCEPTANCE REQUIRED FOR "Canela":

Fontist can install this font if you accept its licensing conditions.

FONT LICENSE BEGIN ("Canela")
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
For use on Apple-branded Systems
...
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
FONT LICENSE END ("Canela")

Do you accept all presented font licenses, and want Fontist to download these fonts for you?
=> TYPE 'Yes' or 'No': Yes
...
Installing font "macos/canela".
Fonts installed at:
- /Users/john/.fontist/fonts/Canela.ttc

Using macOS fonts in continuous integration

In a continuous integration (CI) system it is important that the installs do not require user interaction.

The Fontist CLI provides flags for the system to answer mandatory prompts at time of execution:

• The --accept-all-licenses flag allows the install command to install a font, while providing explicit acceptance through a command-line option.

The --force flag ensures that fontist installs the font even if it's already present in the system, thereby guaranteeing its presence in the target path.

$ fontist install --accept-all-licenses --force "Canela"

Example using a macOS font in a generated design

The following demonstration shows how useful this is in a CI environment.

The "Canela" font is a commonly-used commercial font that comes free with macOS, and the "The Blood Is At The Doorstep" movie poster uses the Canela font.

This is the original poster:

Source: mdfilmfest.com License: All Rights Reserved.Link to poster

And we will generate the same using a CI.

Prerequisites

Install the Canela font on macOS using Fontist:

$ fontist install Canela

Generating an image

We can generate the title using ImageMagick in a CI environment.

As described on the ImageMagic convert page, we can use the magick convert command to generate this exact same title.

The command to generate the title:

$ magick convert \
   -size 800x1066 canvas:black \
   -font Canela-Regular-Regular \
   -pointsize 180 \
   -fill white \
   -kerning 0  -interword-spacing 180 -annotate +25+170 'T H E' \
   -kerning 22 -annotate +35+340 'BLOOD' \
   -kerning 60 -interword-spacing 75  -annotate +60+510 'IS AT' \
   -kerning 0  -interword-spacing 180 -annotate +25+680 'T H E' \
   -kerning 60 -annotate +35+850 'DOOR' \
   -kerning 95 -annotate +35+1020 'STEP' \
   poster.png

The generated version is pretty much identical (except for the background)!

Conclusion

Fontist provides you with a convenient way to install fonts outside of system limitations, allowing CI systems to utilize macOS licensed fonts without user interaction.

As always, if you need help with the new functionality, please post at the Fontist Issues page!