Fixing Font Issues in macOS

Getting rid of the annoying ‘name’ table usability error.

Ed Orozco
2 min readJan 18, 2023

I started running into issues with some fonts since upgrading to macOS Ventura.

The biggest issue for me happened when I tried installing Metro Sans, a paid font we use at Synq. And only with some weights, which seemed random to me.

Font Book kept blocking the font and throwing these errors in the validation report:

  • ‘name’ table usability
  • ‘post’ table usability
  • ‘name’ table structure

In addition to that, it was renaming the font to just ø — the reason for which I still don't understand.

Here’s how I solved it:

Shout-out to Jeff from iwebss.com for the original solution.

Steps:

  1. Download and install Typelight
  2. Open the conflicting font Cmd O
  3. Go to Font > Rename Font
  4. Choose “Remove all non-english entries”
  5. Fill in the details for your font. In my case they were:Family name: Metro SansSub family: Bold (or Semi-Bold, Light, Regular, etc.)Full name: Metro Sans Bold
  6. Click Rename to apply the changes
  7. Go to File > Save As (Cmd + S)
  8. Save it to any folder you like
  9. Go to the newly created font and double-click it to install it with Font Book
  10. The font should be working across all apps now

Hope it helps!

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Ed Orozco

Sharing a decade of experience designing technical products.