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All operating systems store fonts that have already been used. The reason for this is to save time. This is how it works: every time an application is opened, its fonts load faster and faster. So a Clear Font Cacheis a useful thing to have on your computer. But caches can cause problems from time to time. Maybe you can’t see fonts or use them. If you can see the fonts, they look messed up or hard to read.
You have a hard time changing and switching fonts. Or, when you change a font, the application or programme you are working on just stops working. All of these and other things show that your font cache has been messed up. Don’t be afraid. The answer is easier than you might think.
All you have to do is clear your system’s font cache. Most of the time, cache is saved on your Windows computer in the “.dat” format. The “.cache” format is usually used to save caches on Mac. Clearing the font cache will get rid of all the useless and broken font files. This will fix any problems you were having with the font cache.
Steps to Clear Font Cache on Windows
Administrator privilege required
- Open “This PC” or Windows Explorer (hit Windows Key + E) and navigate to the path below. Directly pasting the path in Windows Explorer will not work, you will need to specially allow permission to access certain folders. So start from C:\ and navigate to the path.
- C:\Windows\ServiceProfiles\LocalService\AppData\Local\FontCache
- Select all files in this folder (Ctrl + A) and delete them.
- Open the Run dialogue again, enter “%WinDir%\System32\” and press Enter key.
- Find the file named “FNTCACHE.DAT” and delete it. Warning – Be careful not to modify or delete any other file.
- Restart your computer. The font cache will be rebuilt during the restart.
How to Clear Font Cache on Mac
Method 1
- Shut down your computer.
- Press the Power button to start up your computer. As you hear the power-up tone, immediately press and hold down the Shift key. You can release the Shift key after the Apple logo appears.
- Let the computer start-up in Safe Boot. This mode can be used to automatically clear font cache on Mac.
- Restart your computer normally.
Method 2
- Close any running applications and run the Terminal. You can open Terminal from Applications > Utilities > Terminal
- For only your user account, type “atsutil databases –removeUser” and hit the Return key. For clearing font cache for all users, type “atsutil databases –remove” and hit the Return key. This clears the font cache on Mac.
- Now you need to stop and restart the ATS server. For doing so, first, enter “atsutil server –shutdown” in the Terminal and hit Return. Then enter atsutil server –ping’ and hit Return.
FAQs
Font caching allows an application to load from external memory only the letters required to show a string. This means that the whole font does not need to reside in the addressable flash or RAM, but can be stored on a larger file system.
Optimizes performance of applications by caching commonly used font data. Applications will start this service if it is not already running. It can be disabled, though doing so will degrade application performance.
Optimizes performance of applications by caching commonly used font data. Applications will start this service if it is not already running. It can be disabled, though doing so will degrade application performance.
Delivery Optimization in Windows 10 clears its cache automatically. Files are removed from the cache after a short time period or when their contents take up too much disk space. However, If you need more disk space on your PC, you can clear the cache manually. In the search box on the taskbar, enter disk cleanup.