Solved How to uninstall/delete unnecessary fonts?

I was just doing a bit more customizing on my husband's new Win11 Pro PC and stumbled upon a list of 122 fonts in 'Settings'. Some of them are for foreign language characters we'll never use. I clicked on the 3 dots (...) for a few of them and saw an option to uninstall. I tried to do that. A few said they were system-protected and couldn't be uninstalled. Others didn't say that, but nothing happened when I clicked 'uninstall' for them. Then I tried the 'hide' option for those ones and they grayed out a bit on the screen, but were still visible in the list.

In Control Panel, I saw a Fonts folder. I opened that and there are 130 items listed there. I tried to delete one of the ones that I'd gotten grayed out in the Settings list of fonts. The OS asked me if I was sure, I said yes. And nothing happened. It's still there and visible through both the Settings and Control Panel views, only a little grayed out. I tried 2 or 3 times and nothing changed. I also see now on my own Win11 Home computer that I use for work/financial stuff, that there are 277 fonts found in the Settings list which I never realized were there.

How can a person delete these ones they know they'll never use, which aren't system-protected ones? Is there any way to do it? (I tried following Brink's tutorial and it didn't work.)

(As a side note, I'm also curious if font files have ever been known to be exploited by malware?)

I guess I found a partial answer regarding the malware question. I can see from this other tutorial that it can happen with fonts that come from 3rd-party stuff: Enable or Disable Untrusted Font Blocking in Windows 11 Still wondering about the fonts that are there from the windows installation (both the malware question and how to remove unnecessary ones).

Can't say about the deletion part except that some Fonts are required. Also involved are programs that install their own support Fonts. Has the Character Map app been looked at? Put that in the Taskbar Search box.

Berton said:

Has the Character Map app been looked at? Put that in the Taskbar Search box.

Click to expand...

Hi Berton. :) I don't know anything about Character Map, but I did what you said. When it opened, the drop down list had a massive amount of fonts in it. But I don't know how that app would have any use for me regarding my question, or even in general. It doesn't give me any option that I can see for uninstalling any fonts.

It was mostly to point out the interweaving of things in Windows and the files necessary for that.

Already a long time I disable unwanted fonts in Windows straight after installation the sytem.
I do that via a registry file.
You find my most recent registry file attached as zipped file.
If you want to have a look what is in it, you can add .txt to the .reg extension, so there is no danger abusively loading the file.

Almost every app that functions in Windows does use the information from that registry entry, but I noticed for Open Office and Libre Office it does not function. That's one of the reasons I do not use those apps.

BTW. You could copy the file and just leave one or two fonts to be disabled, to see if that's what you'd like to use.

I'm a bit nervous of messing around in the registry regarding fonts, if I can avoid it, since I don't know enough about it all. I'm a real greenhorn when it comes to these kinds of things. Wouldn't want to make an error somehow.

I came across a short little YT video which made me realize that even though it's only one local admin account on the system, I don't have permission to do anything other than 'read/read & execute' these fonts. Seems strange that the OS doesn't give a person permission to deal with unnecessary fonts right from installation when they're using the admin account... The video showed a way to change ownership in order to get permission... but I'm confused about whether or not a person can safely delete fonts that aren't protected by the system, or if that would cause problems with anything installed? E.g. Chrome, security software, Corel draw (free trial) are the only things we've installed so far on hubby's new pc. Would deleting non-protected fonts possibly lead to any issues with those or with windows apps?

the YT vid:

With the method via the registry file, I don't need to delete any fonts, protected or not. They are just disabled, don't appear in the list anymore.

So no need for taking over ownership.

@Kees Oh, I see. I was asking about uninstalling/deleting the unnecessary ones. But yeah, if I can't do that then maybe disabling would be the next thing he would want me to try. I'll have to see what he wants when he gets home from work.

Some tutorials you may or may not find helpful.

@antspants Hi. :) Yeah, it was the first link you listed that I tried and none of it worked for me. As mentioned above, I discovered (after watching that little YT video I linked to) that Brink's tutorials didn't work for me because the local/admin account for some reason doesn't have permission to do anything except 'read' and 'read & execute'. Seems the only way I could do any deleting/uninstalling of non-protected fonts would be to first take ownership from the 'Trusted Installer' and give it to us (the local/admin account). (Unless there's another way involving Group Policy Editor or Terminal, maybe, that I'm not aware of.) I just don't know how to tell in advance if any of the non-protected fonts might be needed by any windows apps/3rd-party apps to function properly.

I did the tutorial at the third link earlier, using Group Policy Editor to put the system in 'audit' mode (because my husband has some older programs to install soon from his old win7 computer and I'd like to see how that goes).

Kees said:

With the method via the registry file, I don't need to delete any fonts, protected or not. They are just disabled, don't appear in the list anymore.

So no need for taking over ownership.

Click to expand...

This is a better method. When you remove fonts by brute-force, they will return if you run a "SFC /scannow" or DISM repair command to fix Windows corruption problems. That's because there's another copy of the same files hidden in a protected Windows folder. A repair command will convince Windows to restore the "missing fonts".

Hey there

I can only guess that the fonts you’re trying to remove are system fonts and I’d hide them before taking ownership or trying to delete them. If you hide them, the system won’t suffer and you won’t break anything?

@garlin Oh thanks! Good to know. :) I'll let my husband know about that too. :)

@antspants Yeah, my curiosity started because of hubby's wish for a minimal uncluttered system (as much as an average newbie user can do with relative ease, that is). And then I started getting curious about the malware aspect. But maybe that's just more a risk from 3rd-party stuff than from MS fonts, though.

Thanks everyone. :)
@Kees thx for sharing the file. I'll show it to hubby when he gets home from work. :)

Honestly, on a modern PC the default Windows fonts take a relatively small percentage of your disk space. If you install Office on the other hand, that really bloats the system unless you skip the optional fonts.

Trying to learn said:

Yeah, my curiosity started because of hubby's wish for a minimal uncluttered system

Click to expand...

Fonts are tiny tiny tiny, the only impact would be aesthetic (that clutter) and hiding them can take care of that?

When storage is so cheap, why do we still obsess over it? I have a 2 TB drive in my laptop. I will never be able to fill this. All the guff on my system amounts to a few MBs. It's too trivial to worry about.

kelper said:

When storage is so cheap, why do we still obsess over it? I have a 2 TB drive in my laptop. I will never be able to fill this. All the guff on my system amounts to a few MBs. It's too trivial to worry about.

Click to expand...

There are still people crying over their 512 GB NVME boot drives. I bought a normal 4 TB Samsung EVO SSD for my older laptop.