Hi All,
Got an email today telling that FontExplorer X is retiring on June 30th, 2023, and won’t be sold after June 30th, 2022.
Are there alternatives anyone would recommend?
" Don’t worry—we’re already putting some great things together to ensure you continue to have the best font management experience possible."
Sounds like they plan to introduce a major new version with a new name so they can collect a new fee for the “new” product.
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Their website doesn’t mention this at all, currently promoting the latest version.
I stopped using FontExplorer X several years ago, these days I get by just fine with Font Book.
I have some 20K fonts!
Yikes! That is definitely one reason why a dedicated font management system — and particularly one that can enable fonts as and when required — is a good idea, but I’d have to wonder how many of those 20K you’re actually using on a regular basis.
I used to be a big typography nerd, but a few years ago I realised that it had gotten out of control and trimmed down my library dramatically. Even as a designer, I reckon my font usage has been in the low hundreds at most.
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One of the main reasons why I stopped using FontExplorer X, beside the cost of upgrading, was that I’d frequently have to delay updating macOS or the various Adobe apps I was using for fear of breakages preventing me from getting work done. (Adobe’s apps would also give me pause before upgrading macOS, but that’s another topic…)
I’m not using a huge amount, perhaps 100-200. The difficulty is that I have 20 years of projects that have used different fonts that I occasionally need to open, plus even though I don’t use all this fonts I want an easy way to catalogue and more importantly look through for specific projects that come up. I’d be happy to offload them to my external hard disk, but need some workflow in how to manage them.
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At one time, I used to manage almost as many fonts as that, and used a number of font management tools. Is FontManager X the one that was developed by LinoType? Adobe used to have a pretty good one too, until (as I recall) they let it stagnate - ATM? And one from Extensis? I don’t remember. It was a couple lifetimes ago. I was a working in DTP back when we were still dealing with Aldus Pagemaker the Mac’s Font/DA mover. The idea that we could turn fonts on and off without ether crashing the Mac or having to restart was a breakthrough.
These days I am enjoying TypeFace for my limited font management needs. Not sure how it would fare with that large a collection - I am down to about ± 9000 faces - but it seems to be quick and nimble. More than enough for my needs at this point.
just looked it up: Extensis Suitcase.