Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

How do you like the new font?


  • Total voters
    80

cambookpro

macrumors 604
Feb 3, 2010
7,228
3,365
United Kingdom
It uses a new "version" but really it's just the existing one. San Francisco on the watch was renamed to San Francisco Compact. San Francisco is the one used on iOS and Mac. There are two variants.
Oh yes, I've just downloaded the new version from the dev centre and compared it to the old one. SF Compact Display is (besides what I presume are subtle tweaks to the tracking) the same font as the old SF Display.

I'm glad they tweaked it for iOS and OS X, that version looks much better at larger sizes.
 

navaira

macrumors 68040
May 28, 2015
3,934
5,161
Amsterdam, Netherlands
it's possible that it's a yosemite problem? I assume you are using the ported fonts on yosemite. The metric of SFNS (what the filename is under 10.11) is different from helvetica neue, so it does look odd in several places on 10.10. For example, go to "About This Mac" View attachment 560896
Aha! My About This Mac looks the same, haven't noticed that before. Yeah, it's definitely a Yosemite problem.

Interestingly enough switching off "LCD font smoothing" makes San Fran look cleaner (if thinner).
 

Sheza

macrumors 68020
Aug 14, 2010
2,091
1,807
Upgrade their hardware keyboards? I don't think so.

The new Macbooks are the first Apple computers to use a different font on the keyboard in over 10 years. A font they've now changed significantly just weeks after shipping those devices.


But again... I still think it is a change for the better. The original version of San Francisco was not great.
You didn't say keyboards! But the fact that I didn't know there was a different keyboard font on the MacBook speaks volumes... if you look at MBP keyboards they don't exactly use Helvetica, in fact they look very similar, if not a little thicker, to the MacBook keyboard.
 

zx629

macrumors newbie
Jun 17, 2015
28
32
Hey guys. Thanks a lot to the OP for providing these.

I've been playing with the developer fonts and it seems like the Text version of SF looks more like the El Capitan spacing than the Display version. It's not 100% (it's a little bigger, spaced more like Helvetica Neue), but I feel like it works better with Yosemite, especially in apps like Mail and Safari. Any thoughts? Here are the Text system fonts if people would like to try them out and see which they like better. Install them just like in the OP's post.

Display

Display.png



El Capitan

El Capitan.png



Text

Text.png
 

Attachments

  • SF system fonts.zip
    363.2 KB · Views: 420

impulse462

macrumors 68020
Jun 3, 2009
2,097
2,878
I can definitely notice a change in font throughout El Capitan, and I think its awful. They stretched out a lot of letters, I think it looks worse than Helvetica Nue. However maybe, because I don't have a retina screen it looks worse. Either way it's definitely noticeable which itself is annoying.
 

kmj2318

macrumors 68000
Aug 22, 2007
1,669
712
Naples, FL
Text version of SF looks more like the El Capitan spacing than the Display version

Most likely. Text is the one that will be used most of the time. Display is probably only used on things like the date in NC, the headers in Reminders, the date in Calendar, the title when you have an empty library in iTunes, the welcome screens iWork, etc., very few and far between. It's only meant for large titles.
 

Takeo

macrumors 6502a
Nov 10, 2004
851
824
Canada
I LOVE LOVE LOVE it on my iPad and iPhone (massive improvement over Helvetica) but on my Mac with an external 27" non-retina display... it's only marginally better than Helvetica (or maybe even no better). It's too small, thin and light. I wish there was a way to bump up the size and weight a touch overall (just 1 px bigger overall and one weight heavier overall). If not I may hack Lucida Grande back in (as I'd done with Yosemite since Helvetica was horrible). I'm guessing it's better on Retina screens.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.