[OS X TeX] How to add the CM and other fonts of MacTeX to the system fonts

[Herbert Schulz]

> On Feb 9, 2025, at 11:30 PM, Salomon, David <david.salomon at csun.edu> wrote:
> 
> Hi everyone,
> 
> I have recently installed MacTeX on my two iMac computers running OS 10.14.6 and 15.3.
> 
> I have used it for a while, and it typesets fine with the CM fonts.
> 
> Today, I noticed that other apps, such as Adobe Illustrator, Microsoft Word, and TextEdit, do not have access to these fonts. The Font Book app also doesn't include them.
> 
> How can I include the CM and AMS fonts in my system?
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> David Salomon
> dsalomon at csun.edu
> http://www.davidsalomon.name/
> (619) 873-6742 mobile
> 619-443-6528 landline

Howdy,

First, are you typesetting using pdflatex or latex? The default fonts for those processors are the CM fonts. On the other hand xelatex and lualatex default to the Latin Modern fonts which are an extension fo the CM fonts and have opentype versions (there may be an opentype version of the CM fonts, I'm not sure) which can be used by other apps on the Mac.

Next is to get the opentype versions of the fonts recognized by the Mac font system. This is easily done by using the Font Book app supplied by Apple. There are two ways to get the Latin Modern fonts recognized by Font Book. 

If you only want to use the Latin Modern fonts in other apps you can copy those font files to your personal font folder. This, of course, takes extra storage space but is failry simple. In Terminal run the three commands

cd /usr/local/texlive/2024/texmf-dist/fonts/opentype/public
cp lm ~/Library/Fonts
cp lm-math ~/Library/Fonts

and then open Font Book so that they get registered into the font system.

If you want/need to use other opentype fonts available from TeX Live installed by MacTeX you create a New Library in Font Book

You need to know that most of the opentype fonts are stored in sub-directories of /usr/local/texlive/2024/texmf-dist/fonts/opentype/ (the year is the yearly version of TeX Live installed by MacTeX).

In Font Book create a new Library and give it a convenient name. The Right/Ctl-Click on the Library and click on Add Fonts to … where … is the Library Name. In the box you get click popdown menu and select the root of your storage drive and click you way down to /usr/local/texlive/2024/texmf-dist/fonts/opentype. If you want to select all of those fonts simple hit Add at that point. As Font Book checks each fonts it may very well complain about several of the fonts it finds, skip over those fonts. But note, this will add a huge number of fonts to the font list.

Finally, if you use the second method you will have to open Font Book every once in a while since some of those fonts will get updated as you update TeX Live (using TeX Live Utility) and you will have to manually remove that library if/when you install next year's MacTeX so you are using the latest font versions.

Good Luck,

Herb Schulz
herbs2 at mac.com