Q & A - Buying a new fond online

Q:  I want to buy a new font online for my Mac, but how do I get it on my system?

The Mac operating system includes a utility called Font Book that you can use to add, remove and organise the fonts on your computer. You can find the program in your Mac’s applications folder.

After you download a new typeface from an online font shop, double-click the file you received. Font Book should open automatically and display a sample alphabet or character set in the new font. Click the Install Font button at the bottom of the box to add the font to your Mac’s type library.

Font Book checks the fonts it installs to make sure there are no problems or incompatibilities with the new files. The program should also alert you if it finds duplicate fonts on the computer and fixes the issue for you. If you want Font Book to remove a font you no longer use, click All Fonts on the left side of the window and select the name of the typeface in the Fonts list.

Go to the File menu and choose the Remove option; fonts used by the macOS menus, dialogue boxes and other system functions cannot be removed. Windows users can install a new font by right-clicking the downloaded file and selecting Install from the menu, or by double-clicking the font file and selecting the Install button. Fonts can be managed in the Windows Font control panel. To get there from the desktop, go to the Start menu, type “fonts” in the search box and select “Fonts — Control Panel” from the results lists. When the control panel is open, you can add fonts by dragging them into the window. Selecting a font in the window and clicking the Delete button removes it.

Q: Facebook starts to play videos automatically and loudly when I use the Android app. How do I make it stop?

Facebook announced this year that it was making changes to the way videos work on its service, particularly for mobile devices. In a blog post that explained the new features, the company said that mobile users “had come to expect sound when the volume on their device is turned on” and that it heard positive feedback about the audible autoplay behaviour. The sound of the videos fades in and fades out as you scroll through your News Feed, and the videos are not supposed to be audible at all if you have the main volume level on your phone set to silent. However, if you prefer to keep your phone’s volume set to a normal level and do not want Facebook videos blaring in public when you browse your news feed, you can disable the function in the app’s settings.

In the Android version of the Facebook app, tap the three-lined menu button in the toolbar and scroll down to App Settings. Next to “Videos in News Feed Start With Sound,” tap the button to the Off position. If you do not want videos in your feed to play automatically at all, tap Autoplay toward the bottom of the list and tap “Never Autoplay Videos” on the next screen before leaving the Settings area.

In the iOS version of the Facebook app, tap the three-lined menu icon in the corner of the screen and choose Settings. Select Account Settings and then Sounds. Turn off the button next to “Videos in News Feed Start With Sound.” You can find the preferences for autoplay videos in the Videos and Photos section of the main Settings screen.