Text shown as question marks on MacOS Tahoe

[manfred.heinlein@…]

Forwarding to chimerax-bugs@cgl.ucsf.edu <mailto:chimerax-bugs@cgl.ucsf.edu>

Thus you don't need to send this specific report again, but for future reference, here is the contact info for ChimeraX (which is different than that for Chimera):

<https://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/chimerax/docs/contact.html>


> Begin forwarded message:
> 
> From: Chimera Licensing <Chimera@ucsf.edu>
> Subject: RE: ChimeraX display problem
> Date: January 20, 2026 at 3:23:28 PM PST
> To: Manfred Heinlein <manfred.heinlein@ibmp-cnrs.unistra.fr>, "chimerax@cgl.ucsf.edu" <chimerax@cgl.ucsf.edu>
> Cc: Todd Blevins <todd.blevins@ibmp-cnrs.unistra.fr>, "chimera@cgl.ucsf.edu" <chimera@cgl.ucsf.edu>
> 
> Please send your email to the appropriate address so that your problem can be addressed.
>  
> https://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimera/docs/feedback.html
>  
> This email is used solely for commercial licensing purposes.
>  
> Kim
>  
> Chimera Licensing Team
> Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry
> School of Pharmacy
> University of California, San Francisco
>  
> Learn more about ChimeraX commercial licensing <https://www.cgl.ucsf.edu/chimera/commercial_license.html>
>  
> _______________________________________
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> From: Manfred Heinlein <manfred.heinlein@ibmp-cnrs.unistra.fr <mailto:manfred.heinlein@ibmp-cnrs.unistra.fr>>
> Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2026 2:39 AM
> To: chimerax@cgl.ucsf.edu <mailto:chimerax@cgl.ucsf.edu>
> Cc: Todd Blevins <todd.blevins@ibmp-cnrs.unistra.fr <mailto:todd.blevins@ibmp-cnrs.unistra.fr>>
> Subject: ChimeraX display problem
>  
> Hello, I am using a MacBookPro with OS Tahoe 26. 2 (Apple M1 Max, 64 GB memory, 2,8 TB available on hard disk) and suddenly encounter a display problem in ChimeraX where all letters are now shown as a question mark (see screenshots). The computer
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> Hello,
> I am using a MacBookPro with OS Tahoe 26.2 (Apple M1 Max, 64 GB memory, 2,8 TB available on hard disk) and suddenly encounter a display problem in ChimeraX where all letters are now shown as a question mark (see screenshots). The computer has all fonts required for ChimeraX and now we do not know what else to check. We reinstalled the latest version of Chimera X and also tried earlier versions but this did not help. Neither restarting the mac improved this situation. Could this be an incompatibility with the latest OS software or with specific system settings? I would be grateful if you could let us know how we could proceed in solving this problem.
>  
> Best regards,
> Manfred Heinlein
> Senior Group Leader at IBMP
> _______________
>  
> Manfred Heinlein, PhD
> Institute of Plant Molecular Biology (CNRS) | University of Strasbourg
> 12, rue du Général Zimmer
> 67084 STRASBOURG
> France
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> Phone office          +33 (0) 3 67 15 53 59
> manfred.heinlein@ibmp-cnrs.unistra.fr <mailto:manfred.heinlein@ibmp-cnrs.unistra.fr>
>  
>  

>  


[Elaine Meng]

Added by email2trac

[Elaine Meng]

Added by email2trac

[Eric Pettersen]

Seems the same as #19549 and #18864

[Tom Goddard]

The question marks are caused by a Qt window toolkit bug where it find some "Times New Roman" font installed on your Mac which is not the system version and does not handle it properly. Sometimes this is installed by Microsoft tools. A heavy handed way to fix this is to use the "Reset Fonts" option under Mac Font Book app Settings. But that removes all your non-system fonts. So you might prefer to find the troublesome "Times New Roman" font in /Library/Fonts or /Library/Fonts/Microsoft or ~/Library/Fonts and remove or rename it.

More details are described here

​https://www.rbvi.ucsf.edu/trac/ChimeraX/ticket/19549

Hopefully a future version of the Qt window toolkit will fix this bug. The ChimeraX daily build is using Qt 6.10 while the ChimeraX 1.11 version is using Qt 6.9 so just using the daily build could fix it.