MacOS – Install Apple Symbol font on Mac OS X

I'll bet you have a font corruption problem.

1. Split the uninstalled fonts into two groups.
2. Import the first group.
3. Check to see if they imported successfully.
   • If yes, you know the problem is in the second group, so go to step #1.
   • If no, the second group might be okay, so try importing that.

And so on.

You should be able to narrow down the problem without having to import each font one at a time. But my guess is that one or more of your fonts is corrupted.

OS X normally will not display a character in the Private Use Area unless you manually set the font in the app. I understand this is intentional, since every font could have a different glyph at the same PUA code point, and it only makes sense to display something when the user specifies the font.

I think it should also work when the right font is selected via CSS or other markup in a document being read.

Some earlier versions of OS X did not have this "feature" and did display PUA stuff. I don't know how they chose which font to use when more than one had something at the code point selected.