This issue has come up for me and others in several fonts, so I have worked on documenting and testing it today.

To summarize:

1. Working in a macOS app like TextEdit, try to select the default instance of a variable font.
2. If the font’s default instance is not “Regular,” the style cannot be selected, and the style selection instead goes to something else (usually a Medium weight, for whatever reason).

It seems most likely that this is a macOS bug, so I have filed an Apple Feedback ticket FB7734904 (leaving this here in case anyone from Apple comes across this).

However, it is also possible that there is something that could be do to the fonts to make this work.

https://github.com/arrowtype/vf-default-instance-test

A simple example: this 2-source font in which Light is the default instance:

This happens on the following fonts, and presumably others:

• Recursive
• Commissioner
• Encode Sans
• Name Sans

Have others experienced this problem? Have you found any solutions / ways to get around it?