Font activation
When a font is available for use, it is called an active font, and the process of making it available is called activation. When the font is removed from availability, it is deactivated.
A font manager’s main purpose is to make fonts available when they are needed, and remove them from use when you are done with them.
Fonts can be activated manually or automatically. Manually activated fonts can be activated permanently or temporarily; automatically activated fonts are always activated temporarily.
Temporarily activated fonts are active until they are manually or automatically deactivated, or until you shut down or log off from your computer.
Permanently activated fonts are re-activated when you restart or log back in to your computer.
You can deactivate any font manually at any time, whether it was activated manually or automatically, and whether it was activated temporarily or permanently. Deactivated fonts will not be reactivated when you restart your computer.
Activation controls (A)
You activate fonts by clicking one of the activation buttons.
A:Toolbar activation buttons B:Collections activation C:Mixed activation
D:Single font activation button E:Font family activation button
What you click determines which fonts get activated.
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Click an activation button on the toolbar to activate all selected fonts.
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Click an activation button for a single font (in a preview or in theFont List) to activate just that font.
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Click an activation button for any group of fonts (a family, set, or library) to activate all members of the group.
The activation “button” for a library or set is at the leftmost end of its row in the collections pane. If all fonts in the collection are deactivated, then the activation button is invisible, but you can still click it.
How you click determines how fonts get activated.
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Click the blue activation button in the toolbar to activate selected fonts temporarily.
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Click the green activation button in the toolbar to activate selected fonts permanently.
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Click a font or group activation button with no keys pressed to activate the fonts temporarily.
The activation button turns blue .
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Click a font or group activation button while pressing the OPTION key (Mac) or CTRL key (Windows) to activate the fonts permanently.
The activation button turns green .
Mixed activation
When a group activation button is a gray circle , it means that the fonts within the group have different activation states (some may be temporarily activated, some permanent, and may be some deactivated).
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Click a mixed activation group button to temporarily activate the fonts in the group.
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Click a mixed activation group button while pressing the OPTION key (Mac) or CTRL key (Windows) to permanently activate the fonts in the group.
Deactivation
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Click the gray activation button in the toolbar to deactivate selected fonts.
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Click a blue or green font or group activation button (with no keys pressed) to deactivate the fonts.
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Click a mixed activation button to temporarily activate the fonts group, then click again to deactivate the fonts.
Status icon reference
To see the status of a font, family, set, or library, look at the icon in the Activation column to its left.
ICON | DESCRIPTION | REPRESENTS |
---|---|---|
Blank, or solid gray circle | No fonts are active. | |
Gray circle with hollow center | Some fonts are active and some are not. | |
Solid blue circle | All the fonts have been activated temporarily. | |
Solid green circle | All the fonts have been activated permanently. | |
Blue 4-point star | The fonts were activated by a plug-in or by global auto-activation. | |
Green circle with lock | Permanently activated system fonts. | |
Red circle with a horizontal bar | The fonts don’t work on your platform (Mac-only fonts on Windows, or Windows-only fonts on macOS) | |
Red circle with an X | The fonts are corrupt. | |
Red circle with a question mark | Fonts that were added in place are missing. |
Keyboard shortcuts
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Press ⌘+O(Mac) or CTRL+O (Windows) to activate all selected fonts temporarily.
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Press ⌘+OPTION+O (Mac) or CTRL+ALT+O (Windows) to activate all selected fonts permanently.
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Press ⌘+K( Mac) or CTRL+K (Windows) to deactivate all selected fonts.
Menu commands
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Choose File > Activate to activate selected fonts temporarily.
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Press and hold the OPTION key (Mac) or the CTRL key (Windows) and chooseFile > Activate to activate the selected fonts permanently.
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Choose File > Deactivate to deactivate the selected fonts.
Shortcut menu
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Right-click on a font, font group, or selected font, then choose Activate from the shortcut menu to temporarily activate the fonts.
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Press and hold the OPTION key (Mac) or the CTRL key (Windows), then right-click on a font, font group, or selected font and choose Activate from the shortcut menu to permanently activate the fonts.
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Right-click on a font, font group, or a selected font, then choose Deactivate from the shortcut menu to deactivate the fonts.
Other ways to activate fonts
Auto-activation works with the Connect Fonts plug-ins. These plug-ins work within several design applications from Adobe. The plug-ins will uniquely identify each font used in a document and add that information as part of the document when you save it.
When you open a document that includes this metadata, the application plug-in will automatically activate the exact font.
This is a real boon for teams using Connect Fonts. You can share documents with other users and the correct font will always be identified and activated.
For more details on auto-activation plug-ins, see Auto-activation plug-ins.
Document activation
When you open a tracked document by double-clicking its icon in the Connect Fonts desktop app, Connect Fonts will activate the document's fonts, then open the document.
This is faster than opening the document in the creative application and waiting for the plug-in to activate the fonts.
For tracked documents where there is no auto-activation plug-in (such as Affinity Designer), this is almost as effective as having a plug-in. (There may be cases where a document doesn’t perfectly identify fonts in use and so Connect Fonts makes its best guess against the fonts in your libraries.)
You can create a custom set of fonts that will be activated whenever you launch a specific application.
This is convenient if you need to use specific fonts in company correspondence, or you have a favorite font that you use in your spreadsheet.
To create an application set:
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Choose File > New Application Set.
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Select the application that you want to create a set for and clickCreate.
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Add fonts to the application set.
The Font Panel is included as part of the auto-activation plug-in for several Adobe applications. It provides access to your libraries directly so that you can select and activate a font from within your design application.
The Font Panel lets you create custom digests: groups of fonts that are shared among your design applications. This lets you have quick access to the fonts you commonly use for design so that you can activate and start using them as quickly as if they were already on your Fonts menu.
For details about the Font Panel, see Extensis Font Panel.