San Francisco (sans-serif typeface)
San Francisco is a neo-grotesque typeface made by Apple Inc. It was first released to developers on November 18, 2014. It is the first new typeface designed at Apple in nearly twenty years and has been inspired by Helvetica and DIN. The macOS Catalina font Galvji is similar to the San Francisco variant SF Pro Text but has lower leading and bigger spacing. Variants. Note: SF has the codename SFNS in macOS and SFUI in iOS, regardless of the official name. Some variants 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. Distributed fonts. SF Compact. Initial font introduced with the Apple Watch and watchOS, but was later rebranded as SF Compact with the introduction of SF UI at WWDC 2015. Different from SF Pro, its characters' round curves are flatter, allowing the letters to be laid out with more space between them, thereby making the text more legible at small sizes, which Apple  Watch small screen demands. SP Compact Rounded was introduced in 2016. SF Pro/SF UI. UI font for macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and tvOS. In 2017, a revised version, SF Pro was introduced, supporting an expanded list of weights, optical sizes, glyphs and languages. SF Pro Rounded (codename SFUIRounded) was introduced in 2018. SF Mono. A monospaced variant. UI font for the Terminal, Console, and Xcode applications. It was introduced at WWDC 2016. Non-distributed fonts. These fonts, for use in different languages, can be found on the Apple website in their corresponding regions of use as variations of SF Pro : SF Condensed. A condensed variant of SF Pro. A variant called SF Condensed Photos was formerly used in Photos. SF Condensed Photos has a tighter width and spacing, and smaller aperture than "SF Shields Condensed-Bold", especially the letter "c", which has less gap at its end than any other variant. SF Hello. A print-optimized variant with adjusted letter-spacing and intermediate optical sizing between SF Pro Text and SF Pro Display; however, some characters are tweaked. It is restricted to Apple employees and permitted contractors and vendors, and is therefore unavailable for public use. SF Cash. A alternative  condensed variant. It includes a chiseled-style SVG Color font titled "SF Cash Chiseled", a plain version titled "SF Cash Plain", and "SF Cash Text Condensed Semibold" which appears more condensed than "SF Condensed Text Semibold". SF Shields. A compressed variant. The "SF Shields Semicondensed-Bold" is narrower than SF Condensed Display-Bold, the "SF Shields Condensed-Bold" is narrower than "SF Shields Semicondensed-Bold", the "SF Display Shields Compressed-Bold" has the most narrow style. SF Camera. Introduced on September 10, 2019 at Apple's keynote; Phil Schiller mentioned it while summarizing the camera updates on iPhone 11 Pro . Different from SF Pro, this variant has a boxier design which gives an industrial and professional look. Its figure and tracking are similar to SF Compact Text. Other fonts. SF Serif (New York). A serif variant. It was introduced as SF Serif (codename Serif UI) at WWDC 2018 as the UI font for the redesigned Apple Books app for IOS 12. It was officially released under the name New York on the Apple Developer site on June 3, 2019. The font includes OpenType features for lining and old-style figures in both proportional and tabular widths. Despite Apple having a  font with the same name with the bitmap format for the original Macintosh (and later converted to TrueType format), it is unrelated to this design. Variable Fonts. Apple introduced the OpenType Font Variations feature of their SF fonts in WWDC20. It is included as a TrueType Font in the installer file on the Developer website. SF Symbols. SF Symbols refers to symbols and icons used in the Apple operating systems. To fit Apple's objectives of core functionality and "easy to use"-ness, these symbols are designed using Apple's visual language and unified design elements. They also include the squircle  instead of standard rounded corners for a more comfortable look, similar to what Apple has used in their other designs. By using unified symbols, users can experience the easiness and intuitiveness when interacting between Apple's devices, services, and apps. Apple's symbols are included as glyphs in the font file of SF Pro, SF Pro Rounded, SF Compact, and SF Compact Rounded (also in their variable font file). Each symbol is available in 3 sizes. These symbols change their thickness and negative space according to chosen weight, they even utilized with the Opentype Variation feature. Using the SF Symbols  app can access more features such as refined alignment, multicolor, and localization of symbols. The symbols properties seems not unified across variants, such as different Unicode arrangement for few symbols resulting different symbols when switching between variants, and also some symbols has noticeable very little details difference in some variants. These symbols are available for developers to use in their apps on Apple platforms only. Developers are allowed to customize it to desired styles and colors, but certain symbols may not be modified and may only be used to refer to its respective Apple services or devices as listed in  the license description. 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 and has replaced Lucida Grande and Helvetica Neue 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 Magic Keyboard and 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. Only SF Pro, SF Compact, SF Mono, SF Arabic, and New York variants are available for download on Developer website and they are the only SF variants allowed to be used by developers. The "San Francisco Chronicle" described the font as having nothing to do with the city and just being "Helvetica on a low-carb diet".