San Francisco (2014 typeface)

For the 1984 Macintosh typeface, see San Francisco (1984 typeface).

San Francisco is a neo-grotesque sans-serif typeface made by Apple Inc. It was first released to developers on November 18, 2014. It was used first as the system typeface of the Apple Watch, and later replaced Helvetica Neue as the system typeface of OS X and iOS with OS X El Capitan and iOS 9. It is also the system typeface of tvOS, starting with the 4th generation Apple TV. It is the first new typeface designed at Apple in nearly 20 years.

Variants

The San Francisco typeface has two variants: "SF" for OS X, iOS, and tvOS; and "SF Compact" for watchOS. 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.

Licensing

The typeface is licensed to registered third-party developers for the design and development of applications for iOS, OS X and watchOS. It is also used on the 2015 MacBook as the keyboard typeface (replacing VAG Rounded) and in recent Apple branding including that for Apple Watch and Apple Music.