I recently updated to OS Tahoe 26.3; when I open the Anki app on my mac, I get the dreaded boxes with question marks in them instead of the Cloze Deletion text. I reinstalled the anki app, and it was still happening. I changed the font using Tools > Manage Note Types > Cards > Styling > “Helvetica”,…

Thank you so much for the replies!! I was able to pick a different font from Font Book as well as realizing I didn’t switch the “Styling” fonts in all the CCS note types. Thank you again!

It appears that your cards may be using characters that aren’t found in the fonts that come installed on macOS Tahoe 26.3. Do you know what specific font is needed? What was the font specified in Styling, before you changed it to Helvetica? Or, what characters are not appearing correctly? What lan…

[image] BenJamesBen: If you know what font you need, use the Font Book app to check whether it is a system font that is available but just not yet downloaded. If it is, you can just download the font using the Font Book app to make it available to the system. In addition to this, try this: …

Still getting the "garbled" boxes with question marks in them after updating to mac OS Tahoe 26.3 despite switching font to Helvetica

Anki Help

Anon_0000 March 19, 2026, 5:25pm 3

In addition to this, try this:

Might be a broken font. Happened to multiple mac people in the past.

Topic		Replies	Views
Latest macOS font compatibility Help	14	540	January 9, 2026
Text is all boxes with an x after mac update Sequoia 15.7.2 Help	4	92	December 13, 2025
Garbled text (question mark in box) while entering text in new cards Help	6	294	October 23, 2025
Mac mini upgrade, now have question marks in boxes Help	15	360	October 23, 2025
Encoding problem with new Anki Version Help	4	59	April 28, 2026

Still getting the "garbled" boxes with question marks in them after updating to mac OS Tahoe 26.3 despite switching font to Helvetica

Related topics