Mavericks Dictionary making every word selectable

For some reason, Dictionary changed the font of all the words in it to bold and making them each selectable to view their definition. A little overkill. Any ideas how I can change it back to the normal way?

I'll upload 2 screenshots - one I found online of how it should look, and the other of how mine looks.

How it should look:


How mine looks:


Any ideas how to fix this?

Do you have Tinker Tool or some other app that allows playing with system fonts?

Nope, don't have Tinker Tool or anything like it.

Have you ever seen anything like this happening? It doesn't seem like Dictionary has any preferences that can be changed, so I'm confused how they could have gotten changed like this.

Every word is selectable in the dictionary - nothing changed - that's the way it is.
I'm only wondering why you have a bold font - that would have had to be changed somewhere else in the system.

I didn't remember everything having been selectable before, but it may very well have been. What's frustrating is the bold type. Any idea what font the system uses for this? Maybe re-installing the font will help fix it? That's the only thing I can think of.

When did the bolding occur? Use your Time Machine backups to restore the dictionary app back to a point in time when the font was normal. If you haven't been making backups, you're just going to have to figure out what it was that changed the font. The font your dictionary app is using (should be Helvetica 12 pt) is not even the normal system font, bold or not. Something you did or some application you installed changed it.

chscag said:

When did the bolding occur? Use your Time Machine backups to restore the dictionary app back to a point in time when the font was normal. If you haven't been making backups, you're just going to have to figure out what it was that changed the font. The font your dictionary app is using (should be Helvetica 12 pt) is not even the normal system font, bold or not. Something you did or some application you installed changed it.

Click to expand...

I think it started a couple weeks ago. I tried the Time Machine backup but it doesn't look like the app itself is the issue because the current Dictionary I have, and the one in Time Machine, was created in August 2013. It has to be something dealing with either Dictionary preferences or something with fonts.

Do you know where Dictionary stores its preferences file? Maybe trashing them can re-create it from scratch?

Do you know where Dictionary stores its preferences file? Maybe trashing them can re-create it from scratch?

Click to expand...

I could only find one plist file for the dictionary app but removing it may not help. It looks like it mirrors the general preferences that can be set. Here is where it's located:

Macintosh HD/Users/your user name/Library/Preferences/com.apple.DictionaryServices.plist

chscag said:

Here is where it's located:

Macintosh HD/Users/your user name/Library/Preferences/com.apple.DictionaryServices.plist

Click to expand...

I looked there and in the Preferences folder of the main library but no plist file. Did it change in Mavericks?

It's not in the main library. It's in your user library which is hidden by default. I should have mentioned that in my last post. You can unhide your user library by doing this. If removing the plist file doesn't work, post back and I'll suggest something that may work.

I saw that in your post and checked both in the main and the user libraries, but no such file. Any other suggestions are welcome.

That's strange, I wonder why that particular plist file is missing? Could be the cause of the problem. OK, maybe we can try to do this:

Download the free application "Tinker Tool" from here. After you download it, you're going to get a warning from the Mavericks GateKeeper. The application is safe and is not malware. I use it myself. Right click on the file and then select open. After it's installed, run it and go to the tab marked "Fonts". It will list the various fonts that are used. You can experiment with it a bit if you like. Click on the box at the bottom that says "Set to default". Maybe that will work.

Just tried that, rebooted and opened Dictionary, but no luck.

OK, let's try this:

Create another account and give it admin privileges. You can call it "Test" or whatever. Log off your normal account and log on to the test account. Open the Dictionary app and see what it looks like. If it's normal, we'll know there's either some corruption in your normal account causing the problem or it might be the missing plist file.

Doing that made Dictionary work normal in the new test account. I checked in the same path for plist files and didn't find any for that account either.

OK, I think I know the reason why you have no plist for the dictionary app. I just checked again and the date on my dictionary plist file is from 2009. It may be from an old version of OS X that has been carried over each time I updated to a new OS X. I think you can safely ignore that.

However, your new account showing a normal dictionary is another matter. Something has corrupted the dictionary app in your regular account. I'm not sure you can copy the dictionary app from the new account to your regular account. I don't think the system will let you do it. You could probably do it with root privileges but that's too dangerous to try and may cause more problems.

Try copying anyway to see if it will work. If the system won't allow it, it will tell you so.

I was able to copy the app over from the new account, but same result. Same thing happened when I restored an old copy of Dictionary from Time Machine.

I did some additional checking after I replied to the last post. There are two plist files which are part of the dictionary app structure and located here: (These are current files.)

Macintosh HD/Applications/Dictionary.app/Contents/

The plist files are: info.plist and version.plist

What I suggest is to move them one at a time to your desktop and restart the dictionary app each time to see if it makes a difference. Don't delete the files. I suspect when you copied the good dictionary app over the bad one, it left the plist files intact.