Sources for inexpensive or free fonts? Esp. Times, which was removed from Monterey

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I don’t mind paying a small amount.
When I go to one of the plethora of free font sites, with all the slam advertising, it makes me leery of their fonts.

I have a few I really like

  • Gentium is free and supports many languages using Latin, Cyrillic and Greek scripts.
  • Dank Mono a typeface for programmers.
  • Dyslexie a font that is helpful for people with dyslexia.

Apple seems to have removed Times from Monterey. Any idea where to find a replacement? Hopefully for less than Linotype’s $39 per typeface.

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At one point, Times (along with some other Microsoft fonts) was released under freeware license by Microsoft. They terminated the project in 2002, but the license terms are still valid: Core fonts for the Web - Wikipedia I vaguely remember downloading a CAB archive from some Linux distribution and extracting it using cabextract (available in Homebrew and Macports).

However, these days I would probably simply export the fonts I need from an earlier version of macOS using FontBook.

Alternatively, if you’re using MS Office, it installs the whole suite of Microsoft fonts with it.

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A free alternative to Times that’s quite similar can be found in Liberation fonts. That collection is built to be metrically compatible with popular windows fonts.

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Playfair Display is very similar but slightly more condensed. It’s also free.

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Google Fonts is a good free resource that is straightforward in its presentation. You can download any font to use in a web app or in desktop apps; it’s not necessary to use their hosted offering.

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I’ve always found FontSquirrel to be a useful source that’s not crammed full of ads. Some of the fonts they link to have both commercial versions and free versions, but supposedly they all have free versions and are kosher for commercial use.

Obviously I haven’t checked out all their fonts, but my general experience is good. :slight_smile:

Incidentally, if you need Times and you have a backup from pre-Monterey you should just be able to copy it from the old backup.

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That Dyslexie one is better than the Open Dyslexic one, though I still use Mono Dyslexic, which I purchased about 10 years ago, but I don’t believe it’s available any more.

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Bonus: if you have SetApp you can use Typeface to keep these automatically up-to-date on your Mac. :slight_smile:

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And the Liberation font family comes free with LibreOffice. It’s what i use all the time.

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I just checked my system, and the Times font file is still in the System Library, but not in the Font Book app. I tried installing it again, no dice, that doesn’t show up either. Times New Roman is still present, and to be honest I doubt anyone would notice any difference.

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Unfortunately, that’s not strictly true nowadays — the Microsoft fonts are only available from within the Office applications, and no longer get added to Font Book.

In the past, I managed to copy over various Microsoft fonts from a Windows installation in a Parallels Desktop virtual machine, back when I still had occasional need for Windows apps. Of course, that’s against the terms of the Windows EULA, so proceed with caution.