I need to remove or deselect Noto Sans (Ventura 13.5.1) so it doesn't appear in character windows

In Ventura and forward, you cannot physically remove, or even simply disable any fonts in the System folder.

Apple confusingly allows you to choose Deactivate in Font Book for these fonts, but nothing happens when you do that. You cannot in any way disable them.

Apple has made an API available to developers since El Capitan to hide fonts that are not meant for your region/language. Most apps use them, such as the Affinity suite.

For whatever reason (and they won't say why), Adobe has refused to implement it. My guess is they don't want to cut off access to fonts an advertising agency or print shop may need to produce a project. But they could still do something as adding a simple check box to turn these non-language related fonts on or off as the user needs them. I've suggested it here.

FWIW, that is an Adobe issue. They should not be displaying the font in their apps. Feel free to contact them.

Turns out you can disable a lot of OS installed fonts in Sonoma. You couldn't do that in Ventura.

Open Font Book (it's the only way to view these fonts). Click All Fonts at the top left.

I put the fonts into List view. As I never use FB for font management, all fonts listed belonged to the OS. Then I just started at the top and right clicked on anything with bold (enabled) text to see if it would let me choose Disable. You can turn off a lot of mostly Asian fonts this way.

You still can't disable any of the Noto Sans fonts, but there's still a lot you can turn off.

good suggestion but Apple won't allow you to deactivate it. DOH! Really annoying

Have you tried to disable it in the Font Book app?