How do Mac OS X font and preference caches cause problems?

Font and preference cache problems are very common on Mac OS X computers. Virtually all users experience cache problems at one time or another, and many people see them on an ongoing and frequent basis.

As you use Mac OS X and it applications—including Adobe Creative Suite, QuarkXPress , Microsoft Office and CUPS print spooler—they make temporary copies of fonts and preference files, and store them elsewhere in your Mac’s file system.

Later, when the programs require the files, they look for the cached copies first. If those copies have corrupted or have fallen out of sync with their original copies, the programs do not operate as expected.

When this occurs, it is common for fonts to disappear from Font menus, fonts to fail to activate as expected, incorrect fonts to appear in documents, fonts to print improperly—even application hangs and crashes.

To avoid these problems, you need to use a preventive font cache maintenance utility. The most advanced such utility is Smasher™ from
Insider Software.