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Add Default Fonts To Notes In Mountain Lion
Mar 11, 2025
A fairly simple way to add default fonts to the notes app.
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0:04
hey everyone this is Michael with CAC
0:06
here and today I'm going to show you how
0:07
you can get rid of the ugly fonts in
0:10
notes and Mountain line and put any font
0:13
you want into the app so in notes here
0:15
you can see that by default the font is
0:18
noteworthy so if I type something to
0:21
test it if I say testing testing one 2 3
0:26
you can see that it's kind of an ugly
0:28
font if I make it bigger you can see
0:31
that more I mean it's it's nothing great
0:33
and it's kind of unprofessional even
0:36
when you're just typing notes uh but if
0:38
I go up to format here I have a couple
0:40
different options under font and default
0:42
fonts I can do Marker F which uh
0:45
honestly is worse and kind of reminds me
0:47
of comic Sands and then you also have
0:50
helvetica which is decent but it's kind
0:52
of plain and boring uh and those are
0:55
your only fonts that notes gives you now
0:57
if you really wanted to you could go to
0:59
format and fonts and then show fonts and
1:02
then go down here and dig through all
1:03
these fonts to find the one that you
1:05
want but that's not really a very easy
1:08
method and uh if you would just want to
1:10
add you know a couple of your favorite
1:12
fonts to the list permanently you can
1:15
add them right here to the default font
1:17
list which is a lot handier than having
1:18
to search for different fonts and scroll
1:21
through the list and select your text
1:23
and then change the font and everything
1:24
like that so what you can do here is you
1:27
can quit notes and then you want to open
1:29
up a new find window and you want to go
1:31
to Mac andhd applications and then right
1:35
there will be
1:36
notes and if you right click on it you
1:38
can show package contents and in here of
1:40
course you want to go into contents and
1:42
then resources and then you want to find
1:45
your language which for most of you will
1:48
probably be English so in the English
1:50
language folder here you'll find a whole
1:51
bunch of different files including this
1:52
property list file here now if you have
1:54
xcode installed when you open this it'll
1:57
open with xcode uh but you you don't
2:00
really want to open it with xcode to
2:02
edit it so you're going to right click
2:04
open with and then other and then I'll
2:06
scroll down here until I find text edit
2:09
and you want to open this up with text
2:11
edit now in the file here you'll see
2:13
that it says locked which means you
2:14
can't edit it at all yet so what you're
2:16
going to have to do is edit a couple
2:18
permissions to make this file editable
2:21
so you'll want to right click on the
2:22
file itself and select get info click
2:25
this little lock icon down here which
2:27
will let let you adjust the sharing
2:29
informations
2:30
and you want to enter your password and
2:32
select read and write for everything
2:34
then you also have to go out of this
2:36
folder here and select the English
2:39
language folder get info there as well
2:42
and then do the same process of entering
2:44
your password changing everything to
2:47
read and write now this can be a little
2:49
bit of a pain but if you use notes a lot
2:53
it's well worth it to have uh everything
2:55
you want right there and available for
2:57
you as far as fonts go so now you can
2:59
open this back back up you'll see that
3:00
it's no longer locked now what you're
3:02
going to do here
3:03
is find a block of text here with a font
3:07
in it so there's there's three of them
3:09
so you're going to want to select
3:10
everything in this block here and copy
3:13
it out so then what you want to do is go
3:15
right to the end here right before it
3:17
says array hit enter and then paste then
3:21
you can just tab over this little chunk
3:22
of text right here in order to get
3:24
everything aligned now what you can see
3:26
in here is that you can edit the font
3:28
names and the sizes so let's open up
3:31
font book and let's pick a font that I
3:35
want to choose so let's go in here and
3:37
I'm going to go under the user fonts and
3:39
I'm going to put in Chiller now this
3:40
isn't really a practical font uh but
3:42
it's kind of fun so I'm going to use
3:44
that and I can also see all the
3:46
information about here and I can see
3:48
there's only a regular style available
3:49
for this now if you had like a regular
3:51
font that had bold and light and
3:54
everything you could put a dash light or
3:56
a dash bold after the font in order to
3:59
change the the weight of the font but
4:02
for this example I'm just going to put
4:03
in Chiller right here and then I'll put
4:05
the size at 15 uh of course you can
4:08
change the size right within the app by
4:10
selecting your text and hitting command
4:12
plus but I'll do this just for now and
4:14
you want to choose a font somewhere
4:16
around 14 or 15 so that it's legible
4:19
then after that you can just save this
4:21
file now what you should probably do if
4:23
you're going to be using this a lot is
4:25
make a backup of your file maybe to your
4:28
desktop I'm just going to paste it here
4:30
because when you install updates and the
4:33
notes app is updated it will replace
4:36
this file so what you'll have to do is
4:38
just drag it back in and then you'll
4:39
have it restored now back in notes here
4:41
if I go up to the format menu under font
4:43
and default font I can see that I now
4:45
have Chiller and I can select that and
4:47
it'll change my text to Chiller and I
4:50
can make this a little bigger here so
4:52
there's how you can add default fonts to
4:53
the notes app in OS 10 Mountain Li this
4:56
probably isn't something practical that
4:57
you want to do if you only use not notes
4:59
here and there but if you use it a lot
5:01
for different notes as I frequently do
5:05
uh you'll probably appreciate having
5:07
something like this available to you as
5:10
always if you have anything that you'd
5:11
like to see me do a hotu on make sure to
5:12
send me an email this is Michael with
5:14
cult Mac and thank you for
5:16
watching
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