To add fonts using Font Book, open the application and choose 'Add Fonts' from the 'File' menu. In addition, Font Book shows the fonts which are installed and allows you to disable them. Fonts are notorious for being corrupt and causing issues. In addition to automatically coping the font to the proper font folders (outlined in Rich Bradshaw's answer) Font Book will verify the font before installing. I suggest using the 'Font Book' program located in /Applications. Previous answer (for reference purposes only): Or you could do as Rich suggested and just move the file using the C rename() function. This could be executed in C++ via the osascript command if you need help with that, it's a separate question altogether. To answer the new question of how to install fonts programatically on a Mac, Rich's answer is correct, just move them into the fonts folder.ĮDIT: To fit within the spirit of my previous answer, here's a (roughly done) AppleScript which will install a font file located at /some/path/to/a/font_file.ttf by using the OS X application 'Font Book' set theFontPath to '/some/path/to/a/font_file.ttf' My previous answer was for the unedited question.