An odd thing happened to me today at work. Firefox crashed, and when I restarted it the font that Firefox uses in the interface turned BOLD. The address bar text turned bold, the buttons and menus turned bold, the task bar turned bold… it drove me bonkers for a little while. Thankfully, all the website text was untouched and remained normal.
This anomaly was all a mystery to me, I never have seen it happen before. Very strange and very annoying. For reference: I am using the newest version of Firefox and the most up to date version of Mac OSX Snow Leopard. After some investigation, I found that the font “Lucida Grande” had become corrupt. So, I figure I would do this quick writeup on how I fixed it, hopefully it helps someone else out there…
How To Fix Firefox Fonts That Turned Bold in Mac OSX
1. Quit Firefox
2. Open your Applications Folder
3. Open Font Book
4. Find “Lucida Grande”
5. Right Click on “Lucida Grande”
6. Select “Reveal in Finder” from the menu
7. A new window will pop open, and “Lucida Grande” should be selected
8. Delete “Lucida Grande” (please note you will have to enter your password to delete it)
9. OSX will then restore the font like new (no worries, you do not have to back it up first)
10. Open Firefox & you should be good to go!
Matt is a Systems Development Director for a multinational franchise. Matt has lived and worked in Hawaii, Chicago, South Florida and currently resides outside of Atlanta. He enjoys his hobbies including Technology, Gadgets/EDC, Fountain Pens, Wetshaving, Clocks, Antiques & Coffee. He even roasts his own coffee weekly.
Thank you! Seriously, this was driving me bonkers!
Great, I am glad to hear this helped you. I know how annoyed I was with it, so I figured it best to do a quick writeup on the issue.
This worked for me but only after a slight variation after step 9.
1. Quit Firefox
2. Open your Applications Folder
3. Open Font Book
4. Find “Lucida Grande”
5. Right Click on “Lucida Grande”
6. Select “Reveal in Finder” from the menu
7. A new window will pop open, and “Lucida Grande” should be selected
8. Delete “Lucida Grande” (please note you will have to enter your password to delete it)
9. OSX will then restore the font like new (no worries, you do not have to back it up first)
———————————-
10. Close everything. Restart.
11. Empty Trash
12. Start Firefox
For reasons I don’t understand, the original method did not work for me but my sequence did.
I tried this method (and the one the202 says) but using “12 px” of “Lucida Grande” or “Lucida Console” still looks a lot bolder in Firefox for Mac than on Firefox for PC or Safari. I used a Font-Squirrel generated font as well, this also looks way too bold.
Hi Oskar,
Not sure exactly why you both had different outcomes. For this, maybe post in the Firefox Support forums? Im sorry I couldn’t be of more help =(
http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/home
Thank you! This worked great just like stated. Seems to be a common problem, unfortunately.