Hides all non-whitelisted Noto fonts on Ubuntu Linux

readme.md

clean_noto.sh

The Ubuntu family Noto font cleaner

The Problem

Ubuntu-based Linux distros treat all of the Noto fonts as dependencies. This is good because it provides an exhaustive international langauge support, but it means there is a huge list of fonts that may not be relivant to your selected language. I'd tried uninstalling them, which was a lot of trouble to uninstall the right ones, and then they came back with a future update.

The Solution

This script uses a customizable whitelist of fonts to keep, creating a user fontconfig file 99-hide-noto.conf that uses rejectfont to reject the other fonts. This should be consistent between updates, and leaves the font files installed for maximum compatibility.

Usage

Edit the clean_noto.sh and then run it. If you change your mind or want to tweak the results, just edit or delete ~/.config/fontconfig/conf.d/99-hide-noto.conf

It automatically refreshses your font cache with the command fc-cache -f after the file is generated.

To see the list of Noto fonts installed you can use the following:

fc-list : family | grep -i "Noto" 

Note that fc-list respects your fontconfig files, so check ~/.config/fontconfig/conf.d/ for any other font config files.

Example 99-hide-noto.conf

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
  <selectfont>
    <rejectfont>
      <pattern><patelt name="family"><string>Noto Kufi Arabic</string></patelt></pattern>
      <pattern><patelt name="family"><string>Noto Looped Lao</string></patelt></pattern>
      <pattern><patelt name="family"><string>Noto Looped Thai</string></patelt></pattern>
      <!-- ... -->
      <pattern><patelt name="family"><string>Noto Serif Tibetan</string></patelt></pattern>
      <pattern><patelt name="family"><string>Noto Serif Yezidi</string></patelt></pattern>
      <pattern><patelt name="family"><string>Noto Traditional Nushu</string></patelt></pattern>
    </rejectfont>
  </selectfont>
</fontconfig>

clean_noto.sh

#!/bin/bash
echo "================="
echo "Noto Font Cleaner"
echo "================="
echo "Hides all Noto fonts except the white listed ones. Edit script to customize."
echo

# --- CONFIGURATION: Add fonts you want to KEEP here ---
# Use the exact family name as seen in fc-list : family | grep -i "Noto" 
# The link comment is just for reference.
WHITELIST=(
    "Noto Color Emoji"      # https://fonts.google.com/noto/specimen/Noto+Color+Emoji
    "Noto Emoji"            # https://fonts.google.com/noto/specimen/Noto+Emoji
    "Noto Music"            # https://fonts.google.com/noto/specimen/Noto+Music
    "Noto Sans Display"     # https://fonts.google.com/noto/specimen/Noto+Sans+Display
    "Noto Sans Deseret"     # https://fonts.google.com/noto/specimen/Noto+Sans+Deseret
    "Noto Sans Gothic"      # https://fonts.google.com/noto/specimen/Noto+Sans+Gothic
    "Noto Sans Math"        # https://fonts.google.com/noto/specimen/Noto+Sans+Math
    "Noto Sans Mono"        # https://fonts.google.com/noto/specimen/Noto+Sans+Mono
    "Noto Sans Symbols 2"   # https://fonts.google.com/noto/specimen/Noto+Sans+Symbols+2
    "Noto Sans Symbols"     # https://fonts.google.com/noto/specimen/Noto+Sans+Symbols
    "Noto Sans"             # https://fonts.google.com/noto/specimen/Noto+Sans
    "Noto Serif Display"    # https://fonts.google.com/noto/specimen/Noto+Serif+Display
    "Noto Serif"            # https://fonts.google.com/noto/specimen/Noto+Serif
)

CONF_FILE="$HOME/.config/fontconfig/conf.d/99-hide-noto.conf"
mkdir -p "$(dirname "$CONF_FILE")"
echo "Regenerating $CONF_FILE"

# Remove old config file first
[ -f "$CONF_FILE" ] && rm "$CONF_FILE"

# Collect all installed Noto font families
mapfile -t NOTO_FONTS < <(fc-list : family | grep -i "Noto" | cut -d',' -f1 | sort -u)
NOTO_COUNT=${#NOTO_FONTS[@]}

MATCH_LIST=()
MISSING_LIST=()
HIDE_LIST=()

for font in "${NOTO_FONTS[@]}"; do
    keep=false
    for allowed in "${WHITELIST[@]}"; do
        if [[ "$font" == "$allowed" ]]; then
            keep=true
            break/.config/fontconfig/conf.d/99-hide-noto.conf
        fi
    done
    if [ "$keep" = true ]; then
        MATCH_LIST+=("$font")
    else
        HIDE_LIST+=("$font")
    fi
done

for allowed in "${WHITELIST[@]}"; do
    found=false
    for font in "${NOTO_FONTS[@]}"; do
        if [[ "$font" == "$allowed" ]]; then
            found=true
            break
        fi
    done
    [ "$found" = false ] && MISSING_LIST+=("$allowed")
done

MATCH_COUNT=${#MATCH_LIST[@]}
MISSING_COUNT=${#MISSING_LIST[@]}
HIDE_COUNT=${#HIDE_LIST[@]}

echo "Total Noto fonts installed: $NOTO_COUNT"
echo "Matching whitelist (kept): $MATCH_COUNT"
for f in "${MATCH_LIST[@]}"; do echo "  + $f"; done
echo "Whitelisted but not installed: $MISSING_COUNT"
for f in "${MISSING_LIST[@]}"; do echo "  ? $f"; done
echo "Total to hide: $HIDE_COUNT"
echo

TMP_FILE="$CONF_FILE.tmp"
# Start the XML file
echo '<?xml version="1.0"?>' > "$TMP_FILE"
echo '<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">' >> "$TMP_FILE"
echo '<fontconfig>' >> "$TMP_FILE"
echo '  <selectfont>' >> "$TMP_FILE"
echo '    <rejectfont>' >> "$TMP_FILE"

for font in "${HIDE_LIST[@]}"; do
    echo "      <pattern><patelt name=\"family\"><string>$font</string></patelt></pattern>" >> "$TMP_FILE"
done

# Close the XML tags
echo '    </rejectfont>' >> "$TMP_FILE"
echo '  </selectfont>' >> "$TMP_FILE"
echo '</fontconfig>' >> "$TMP_FILE"
echo '' >> "$TMP_FILE"
sed -i '$ d' "$TMP_FILE" # Remove accidental extra lines if any
mv "$TMP_FILE" "$CONF_FILE"

# Refresh caches
echo "Regenerating font cache..."
fc-cache -f

echo "Done! The non-whitelist Noto fonts were HIDDEN."
echo "To revert, remove: $CONF_FILE"