Category Sans-serif Foundry Apple Date released 2015 | Classification Neo-grotesque Variations SF Compact | |
 | ||
San Francisco is a neo-grotesque sans-serif typeface made by Apple Inc. It was first released to developers on November 18, 2014. It slightly resembles the typeface Geneva, but with a few differences. It is the first new typeface designed at Apple in nearly 20 years. It also resembles a typeface made in 2009, called Graphik, which is currently used as Sprint's official typeface.
Contents
Variants
The San Francisco typeface has three variants: "SF" for macOS, iOS, and tvOS; "SF Compact" for watchOS; and "SF Mono" for the Xcode application. The main difference is that the sides of letters with round shapes, such as o, e, and s, are round in SF, whereas they are flat in SF Compact. The flat sides allow the letters to have more space between them, thereby making the text more legible at small sizes, which is particularly important for the Apple Watch. Both SF and SF Compact each have two optical sizes: "display" for large and "text" for small text. Compared to display, the letters in text have larger apertures and more generous letter-spacing. The operating system automatically chooses the display optical size for sizes of at least 20 points, and the text optical size otherwise. Additionally, included in macOS Sierra and iOS 10 is a new variant named "SF Compact Rounded". It is used in the new contact placeholder icons introduced in the OSs.
Usage
Since its introduction, San Francisco has gradually replaced most of Apple's other typefaces on their software and hardware products and for overall branding. It was the original system typeface of watchOS and tvOS and has replaced Helvetica Neue and Lucida Grande as the system typeface of macOS and iOS since OS X El Capitan and iOS 9. Apple uses it on its website and for its product wordmarks, where it replaced Myriad Pro. It is also used on the keyboard of the 2015 MacBook and on the 2016 MacBook Pro, replacing VAG Rounded. It is also used as Apple's corporate typeface.
Apple restricts the usage of the typeface by others. It is licensed to registered third-party developers only for the design and development of applications for Apple's platforms.