[Bug]: Most Electron apps delete all your bitmap fonts from your user font cache on Linux immediately upon startup.

[miranda]

Preflight Checklist

• I have read the Contributing Guidelines for this project.
• I agree to follow the Code of Conduct that this project adheres to.
• I have searched the issue tracker for a bug report that matches the one I want to file, without success.

Electron Version

30

What operating system are you using?

Other Linux

Operating System Version

Arch Linux

What arch are you using?

x64

Last Known Working Electron version

No response

Expected Behavior

I expect Electron to not violate my system and delete my installed fonts against my will.

Actual Behavior

Most, but not all, Electron apps wipe out all your bitmap fonts (bdf, pcf, etc) immediately upon starting them. Notable offenders: Discord, Cider, Caprine, Bitwarden, Zoho Mail Desktop

The version of Electron seems to not matter. It happens with everything from 26 through 30 from what I've been able to surmise.

You can restore your fonts by running fc-cache --force, but this happens every single time you start the electron app, therefore it is absolutely infuriating.

Testcase Gist URL

No response

Additional Information

The only way I have found to stop this from happening (besides banning all Electron apps) is to use firejail to restrict the apps from being able to affect your ~/.fonts directory.

[electron-issue-triage]

Hello @miranda. Thanks for reporting this and helping to make Electron better!

Would it be possible for you to make a standalone testcase with only the code necessary to reproduce the issue? For example, Electron Fiddle is a great tool for making small test cases and makes it easy to publish your test case to a gist that Electron maintainers can use.

Stand-alone test cases make fixing issues go more smoothly: it ensure everyone's looking at the same issue, it removes all unnecessary variables from the equation, and it can also provide the basis for automated regression tests.

Now adding the blocked/need-repro Needs a test case to reproduce the bug label for this reason. After you make a test case, please link to it in a followup comment. This issue will be closed in 10 days if the above is not addressed.

[miranda]

Ok this may actually be fixed. I could not get it to happen with Electron Fiddle, so I cloned the Caprine repo and built it. It deleted my fonts but after I changed the Electron version in package.json from 29.0.1 to 30.0.1, the resulting build does not do it. Does anyone know if this bug has intentionally been addressed already? It seems that hardly anyone was aware of it because it's related to bitmap fonts that most people don't use anymore, and it didn't come up in the issues search.

Anyway if it pops back up again, a basic "hello world" Electron app made in Code with an Electron 29 dependency was triggering it immediately upon run. I can't get it to happen with 30.0.1 so hopefully it really is fixed!

It's hard to know what version of Electron some apps are actually using so I may have been mistaken when reporting this as still happening with Electron 30, but originally I thought it was.