Illustrator 30.3 Font Handling Issue
The new 30.3 update for Mac introduced "improved font handling in Illustrator (macOS) for better consistency and reduced reliance on unsupported system resources"
However, this seems to have broken auto font activation with the Typeface font manager.
Is there a way to get this fixed?
Thanks!
Leigh
shared this idea
-
Typeface app
commented
It appears that 30.3 only loads fonts that are 'available'. On macOS fonts can be provided on demand by other apps.
Previously when a document was opened all used fonts in that document were loaded by Illustrator. This allowed other apps to provide fonts that were not already available, in order to display them in the document. So missing fonts were provided and displayed correctly.
In 30.3 that doesn't happen: missing fonts are not 'loaded', therefore they cannot be provided by other apps. I suspect there is some new check such as 'if font is available then load font'.
This may also affect 'Document-support fonts'. These are macOS system fonts that do not appear 'available' for new documents (users cannot select them). However if an existing document tries to load such a font the system automatically provides it for that document. So existing documents will render the font correctly, because the missing font is loaded and automatically provided by the system.
If someone on the Adobe team wants more info please feel free to reach out.
-
monokano
commented
In 2026 (30.3), macOS “Document-support fonts” are no longer automatically recognized. This may share the same root cause.
-
Leigh
commented
My local font library is managed by Typeface. In all prior versions of Illustrator, any font not active when the document is opened would automatically activate with the correct fonts for that document.
With 30.3, the document opens with fonts that must be manually activated. The notes for Mac say that it introduced "improved font handling in Illustrator (macOS) for better consistency and reduced reliance on unsupported system resources". This new font handling apparently breaks Typeface’s auto font activation for Illustrator.
It would be great if this could be fixed so that Typeface can auto activate fonts again.
I did reach out to the team at Typeface, and they are still investigating on their end but it doesn't seem clear as to what Adobe changed to make it nonfunctional.
-
It’d require both of them, Adobe and the Typeface team working together, I believe... let’s start with the 'have broken' — how? What goes wrong and how exactly?
The Ai team would need all the information you can provide to start investigating. I’d advise writing the other team too, to make them aware.
