How do I regain access to Font Book? It opens, hangs, then requires Force Quit
I just purchased a new MacBook Pro and migrated everything over from the old one. I had imagined that it was the old one that was preventing me from being able use Font Book (Font Book.app); it’s not that.
When I attempt to open it on the new machine, looks like it is going to work for about five seconds, then becomes completely non–responsive, including the spinning wait cursor, until I use Force Quit.
So far I have tried deleting
-
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.FontBook.plist, -
~/Library/Preferences/Saved Application State/com.apple.FontBook.savedState, and -
~/Library/Fonts,
and then rebooting, but to no avail.
Make a backup of /Users/YOUR_USERNAME/Library/FontCollections, and then delete that folder. Most likely, it's a corrupt font collection. Then, recreate the folder, and add each one back if you really want to investigate.
Otherwise, just delete the collections and start over.
After upgrading to El Capitan Font Book crashed - EVERY time I launched it. Though I couldn't delete the Font Collections folder, I could remove all of the items in it. AND IT WORKED! Font Book is now as it should be. Oh Happy Day!
A variation of suggestions from Alistair and Kevin and the Lucas, the OP, worked for me.
This is exactly the problem I was having. From Lucas: Before the hang begins, the pane on the left briefly shows four items ... “All Fonts” then a subheading “Smart Collection.”
I force-quite Font Book, went to the FontCollections folder (Finder Go Menu, pasted ~/Library/FontCollections).
Sorting by date added, there were some from the day of the crash. I threw those four font collection into the trash, and was able to reboot Font Book without a hitch.
To be safe I should probably trash them all, but for a quick fix this got me back in business.