macOS relies heavily on typography. To ensure that text renders instantly across the entire operating system, your Mac compiles the data from all your installed fonts and stores it in a hidden system-level database known as the Font Cache. This prevents the OS from having to parse raw font files every time you open a document or load a webpage.
If you install a corrupted third-party font, or if the database itself becomes damaged during a macOS update, the results are immediately obvious. Text in menus might appear garbled, websites might display bizarre hieroglyphics instead of normal letters, or design applications like Adobe Illustrator might crash on startup. To fix these typographic nightmares, you must forcefully delete the Mac’s font cache databases.
How to Clear the Font Cache on a Mac via Terminal
You must use a specialized command-line utility to safely purge the font databases for both your user account and the root system.
- Close any open applications (especially design software like Photoshop, Illustrator, or Word).
- Open the Finder, go to Applications, open the Utilities folder, and double-click Terminal (or press Command + Space and search for Terminal).
- To clear the font cache for your specific user account, carefully copy and paste the following command:
atsutil databases -removeUser - Press Enter.
- To clear the system-wide font cache (which often fixes deeper OS-level text issues), copy and paste the following command:
sudo atsutil databases -remove - Press Enter. Because this is a
sudocommand, you will be prompted to type your Mac’s administrator password. Type it (the characters will remain invisible) and press Enter.
Once the commands have executed, the corrupted databases have been deleted. You must restart your Mac immediately. Do not attempt to open any applications. Click the Apple logo and select Restart. As macOS boots up, it will take slightly longer than usual as it scans your font folders and generates a brand new, uncorrupted font cache.