As part of the WatchKit resources, which can be freely downloaded by anyone at Apple’s website, the company released the font it uses on Apple Watch, called San Francisco.
With Yosemite, Apple changed the system font from Lucida Grande to Helvetica, the font used on iOS. This caused some backlash amongst the designer community who detested the change of typeface. The Apple Watch font has been widely praised, leading some people to speculate whether it will become the default on iOS or OS X anytime soon. A user on GitHub has posted instructions on how to try out San Francisco on your Mac today, with some basic changes.
You can download the necessary font files from the GitHub page, which are adapted versions of the files Apple made available, as they have to be changed slightly to work properly as a system font. To install, the steps are quite simple.
- Download the zipped font files.
- Copy the 6 font files to
/Library/Fontson your Mac. (protip: presscmd+shift+gwhile in Finder to type the path directly.)- Run
sudo chown root:wheel /Library/Fonts/System\ San\ Francisco*to set the proper ownership of the font files.- Repair Disk Permissions
diskutil repairPermissions /(for good measure)- Log out and log back in to apply the changes.
Step three and four requires use of the Terminal, so be careful when typing in the two commands. It just changes file permissions, so it’s difficult to go wrong. The Terminal will ask for an admin password, though, as changing permissions requires elevated privileges. Otherwise, it’s a simple case of moving files to a special directory. You can see what it looks like from the above screenshot.
If it turns out you want to go back to Helvetica, just delete the six files from the Fonts folder in Library and reboot. As an aside, it should also be possible to install San Francisco as the primary font on your iOS device, although it will require a jailbreak.
Tell us what you think of Apple’s font in the comments below. San Francisco will officially debut as the font-face of Apple Watch early next year. 9to5Mac has also published a first look at how developers can use WatchKit to extend the functionality of their apps to the new wearable.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
Hmm- That would actually look really nice on the iPhone6. Perhaps someone can port this over, or install via BytaFont2.
Use AnyFont https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/anyfont/id821560738?mt=8 to add this :)
From AnyFont:
“NOTE: It is not possible to change the system-font on your device with AnyFont. With AnyFont you can install additional fonts on your device which can then be used by other apps which make use of the device’s font book.”
Changed to San Fran and it looks god. So far the only weirdness is text on Chrome tabs aren’t centered vertically anymore. They’re a little low. I can live with that. The new typeface just feels more modern (yes I know Helvetica is the epitome of “modern,” but whatever).
downloaded and installed these fonts.
the are not as black as I had expected.
they look more grey to me.
os, I went back to lucidagrande_modsysfontyosttc, which I had installed previously :)
Where can I find that?
Looks nice; is that screen grab from a Retina display? Can someone post one of a non-Retina display? Thanks :-)
Here you go: http://i.imgur.com/F19jHvA.png
Not a huge fan on non-retina, the menu bar looks a little high-centered. And it seems a little too light, in places like System Preferences.
Thanks! From the screenshot, looks more appealing than Helvetica to me…
I don’t like Yosemite’s Helvetica on non-retina displays either, it lost legibility
Is this legit? If so why did it change my default start page in Safari? I’m not impressed….
Yes, it’s legit as best I can tell. No change to anything but the system font for me.
I personally think San Francisco is a much better choice than Helvetica for the dark theme. Thanks for posting this!
CAUTION!!! This took over my Search Engine in Safari DO NOT USE! I’ve been spending an hour at least tracking down the shit it installed on my system and trying to get rid of it. It overrides preferences.
What are you talking about? “It” installs nothing.
You yourself copy 6 font files into a folder and that’s it. If you don’t like it, delete the 6 font files you copied and re-login.
Sounds like you’ve installed adware. mplayerX has installing adware in their latest versions.
Just go here and use this software, its a life saver.
http://www.adwaremedic.com/index.php
I ‘installed’ it. But It’s not really my kind of font, I want to delete it, I want helvetica back ;).
But strangely, the fonts aren’t showing in my library/fonts folder, so I can’t delete them.
What do I have to do!?
The fonts are in /Library/Fonts (where you put them) not in ~/Library/Fonts. He made that clear in his docs.
HOW TO UNDO??? PLEASE REPLY ASAP!
OMG!!! I REALLY HOPE YOU GOT THE ANSWER FROM SIMPLY READING THE DAMNED ARTICLE!!! ARE YOU OKAY, SHOULD WE CALL AN AMBULANCE????
Would be nice to add this font to iOS 8. Anyone?
If you are on a jailbroken iOS8 device add my Cydia repo to your sources
http://dbk1ng.myrepospace.com
I ported San Francisco for use with BytaFont2
Unfortunately, deleting the font files in /Library/Fonts to go back to Helvetica didn’t work for me. Even after reboot I’m still with San Francisco font.
Do these instructions work on Mavericks? Just wondering….
Looks great! Does anyone else have an issue where the system font reverts to Helvetica on restart?
You can no longer download to font. The page has been locked due to a complaint….
I reupload it here: http://d.pr/f/1d9hZ
Thanks! I downloaded it, and will give this a try soon
I’m liking it overall. Ironically, I got used to helvetica, but is does look better. One interesting oddity is that the font caused the minutes and am/pm to shift right slightly when the separator is flashing seconds. Not a big deal. San Fransisco looks more like Apple, and we can only hope Apple officially ports it to iOS and OSX
The GitHub repo has a DMCA takedown notice on it now.
Nice but it doesn’t work for me on an old iMac with a “standard” resolution monitor: it is simply too tiny for my old eyes.