Question mark in a square symbol appearing instead of readable characters in Steam

Všechny diskuze > Fóra služby Steam > Steam for Mac > Detaily tématu

jcollymore 12. říj. v 14.59

Question mark in a square symbol appearing instead of readable characters in Steam

I just came back on to Steam on 10/11/2025 to try and play “Sid Meier’s Civilization VI” which I purchased a few years ago. However, when I logged into Steam, the fields for user name and password I typed show a question mark in a square instead of the actual characters I typed.  Although it still accepts what I typed and logs me in, most (if not all) of the text in many areas of the screen have the same “question mark in a square” character instead of legible characters.  
I am running on an M4 iMac, running MacOS 15.7.1 with 24 GB of RAM. My Mac’s “FontBook” appears to have all the fonts that were on the previous 2019 Intel Mac that I migrated from. I think Steam uses the “Arial” font and I still have that in the Font Book. My Steam Client appears to be up-to-date.

Has anyone else experienced this problem? Is there a fix?  I’d appreciate any useful suggestions. (Although I’m not sure if I’ll be able to read them. They may come out as question marks in a squares!) 
Thanks for your help.

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Zobrazuje se 1–11 z 11 komentářů

ringlord111 13. říj. v 10.42

I'm experiencing this in the Mac application. Seems fine on the website though.

Mordegax 14. říj. v 12.20

I have the same problem on Mac. All text in the popups are just question marks in square rectangles.

ゆうれいZ 16. říj. v 3.06

yep

Laewulf 22. říj. v 13.31

Happens to me as well. Only the client application is affected. Started after updating to MacOS 26.

ribeyecut 24. říj. v 16.27

I'm having this same problem, too, with the Steam application on a MacBook Pro running Sequoia 15.7.1. Didn't notice this problem until after a long absence from Steam and updating to the latest Steam client.

Doctor Dougal 25. říj. v 1.57

Same problem here with Steam on Tahoe. I had used it fine a month ago before I updated, but now most, but not all, of the text is in the question-mark-in-box font. I tried uninstalling the app and re-installing it and that did not fix it.

76561199111203632 29. říj. v 1.08

I have this issue aswel!

Vampire 29. říj. v 14.05

BMaclBeezkOt 3. lis. v 7.33

I had the same problem on Tahoe, and I found a way to fix it: in my case it was a problem of duplicated fonts (even if it didn't seem to cause any problem before the Tahoe update...). Here is how to do it:
- Open Font Book on Mac, go to All Fonts, click on a font and select all the fonts with cmd+A.
- Go to File > Validate selection, then look at the fonts with a yellow <!> symbol; often it means these fonts are duplicated (there is one version in your user library, and one in the system library). In my case, a lot of system fonts like Arial and Verdana were duplicated. To check if it's the case, deploy the arrow next to the name of the font and you will see if the problem is Duplicate fonts.
- Click on Files > Resolve duplicates, then do File > "Validate selection" once again to see if it resolved the issue. Spoiler alert: in my case it didn't! Still the same number of yellow symbols.
-> So I had to go to my user library (click on Finder icon, in the top menu click on "Go", then hold Alt and you will see "Library" appear); in the user library, go to the « Fonts » folder, and normally you will be able to spot the duplicated fonts quite easily: in my case, all the duplicated fonts had a black icon "exec" and no extension. Delete these fonts (but be sure to double check that the fonts you delete are indeed duplicates!)
- Then I opened Steam again and the text displayed correctly.
I think that the Arial duplicates were the problem here but I ended up suppressing all duplicated fonts to make sure. I hope this was helpful and that it will work for you too!

Parazite2852 3. lis. v 10.03

good

#10

AngelOfToast 3. lis. v 20.36

I am seeing this also (on two different Macs), and removing the duplicated fonts in the user library solved it! Thanks! (Just in case, I stashed them in another folder rather than completely deleting them...)

#11

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Všechny diskuze > Fóra služby Steam > Steam for Mac > Detaily tématu

Datum zveřejnění: 12. říj. v 14.59

Počet příspěvků: 11

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