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People, need help. I'm in the middle of a hectic work day and the system fonts just went haywire (try to read the browser's tab names)

haywire fonts

There was no system update. I was using the browser and something like a white-flash happened. And, then I noticed nothing outside an application was readable. But everything rendered within an app was - like - text within Sublime Text, Chrome was all readable.

Things tried - 1. fc-cache -f -v , followed by system reboot. 2. Followed through all the steps here hoping it was a font selection issue - fix default fonts

I figure it probably was a font malfunction which I didn't have time to debug, so I switched to Ubuntu. Leaving the question here for future users.

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6
  • Does this only happen in Chrome? If so, go to the Chrome settings and try changing the font there.
    – pretz
    Oct 6, 2017 at 12:32
  • 1
    @SeanPatterson - no across all apps, except the login screen
    – fixxxer
    Oct 7, 2017 at 10:02
  • I would really love to be able to replicate this to debug. I am hoping somebody comes along and adds to this question, because as it stands @fixxxer you are no longer affected, and no other users have come forward with this issue - which makes it somewhat unlikely to ever be marker as 'solved'. I've used EOS for work for almost a year straight now, including dangerous mainline kernel upgrades and not ever actually bricked it! Good luck with Ubuntu.
    – SamMorrowDrums
    Nov 6, 2017 at 10:48
  • @SamMorrowDrums in the interest of reproducing this issue - is there a bunch of commands that you can run to collect this data ? Maybe the next person who comes by, would be of help. I had been using eOS for a few months on the current laptop; it was very surprising indeed. Don't know if upvoting the question would help keep it relevant.
    – fixxxer
    Nov 6, 2017 at 17:48
  • elementaryos.stackexchange.com/questions/13983/… I am having the same problem, and I posted it there. For what I know, if you use a different user account, this problem does not exist. Definitely has to do with some user-level cache, in my opinion.
    – Cheeku
    Nov 23, 2017 at 6:36

3 Answers 3

Reset to default
1

This is likely a bug with the screenshot tool. There is a feature that obscures the onscreen text for screenshots by switching the font, taking the screenshot, and then switching the font back.

The font obviously hasn't been switched back in this case and can be done manually with the following commands in the terminal:

gsettings reset org.gnome.desktop.interface font-name
gsettings reset org.gnome.desktop.interface monospace-font-name
gsettings reset org.gnome.desktop.interface document-font-name
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1
  • oh, nice information. Wish someone could confirm on this.
    – fixxxer
    Sep 4, 2018 at 11:11
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Just disable the option where it says Conceal Text (mine is in Spanish and says Ofuscar Texto). Should be a bug that kept the conceal after you used the tool.

Conceal Text ON

screenshot-tool-conceal-text-on

Conceal Text OFF

screenshot-tool-conceal-text-off

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-1

Did you do a system update before that happened? Unreadable fonts like that might be caused by kernel updates or update to glibc-related libraries according to my experience.

Try to complete the update and do a reboot and check if the problem persists.

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2
  • Save your work and backup it somewhere else first in case the reboot fails and the problem still persists.
    – Axel Advento
    Oct 6, 2017 at 9:50
  • No, @Axel Advento, there was no system updated. I was using the browser and something like a flash happened. And, then I noticed nothing outside an application was readable. But everything rendered internally was - like - text within Sublime Text, Chrome was all readable. I figure it probably was a font malfunction, didn't have time to debug, so I switched to Ubuntu.
    – fixxxer
    Oct 7, 2017 at 10:00

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