San Francisco system font replacement for Yosemite

https://github.com/wellsriley/YosemiteSanFranciscoFont

by siong1987 • 12 years ago

107 57 12 years ago

github.com

gojomo• 12 years ago

For Apple aficionados of a certain vintage, San Francisco will always be the 'ransom font' of the original Mac:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_%28typeface%29

bsimpson• 12 years ago

I expected this.

yoctonaut• 12 years ago

I have to say I was kind of hoping someone had replaced the Helvetica Neue with the old bitmap San Francisco face.

flomo• 12 years ago

IIRC they made a TrueType version of San Francisco, for all your retina display needs.

Perhaps the following would work. Otherwise it might be on some obscure printer disk. https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/58243/can-i-get-th...

Jgrubb• 12 years ago

I don't hate it, but I'd love to just have Lucida back.

wellsosaurus2• 12 years ago

I think you might be able to do that with this: https://github.com/schreiberstein/lucidagrandeyosemite

m3andros• 12 years ago

Thanks, mate! Made my day!

oliv__• 12 years ago

This looks really good. Sleek and friendly at the same time.

I just wish there was a way to bring the old dock back, then I might upgrade.

cmelbye2• 12 years ago

https://www.google.com/#q=old+dock+yosemite

TillE• 12 years ago

Dark mode makes the dock non-ugly, at least. It's not the same as before, but it's inoffensive, especially with Reduce transparency / Increase contrast.

bherms• 12 years ago

Noticing a few issues like so:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/cl4to142icjw2ay/Screenshot%202014-...

wellsosaurus2• 12 years ago

Chrome, right? Not sure what to do about that. I think Chrome is doing some weird baseline alignment stuff that breaks with the custom font.

The issue is open on Github: https://github.com/wellsriley/YosemiteSanFranciscoFont/issue...

DigitalSea• 12 years ago

I might not be in the majority, but I actually like the new system font Helvetica Neue. I am a huge fan of it and on a Retina Display it makes so much sense. Understandably those who do not have the luxury of a Retina Display, I can understand the frustration, but having said that, I think the whole system font change thing has been blown out of proportion.

Even though I like Helvetica Neue, I really dig the new San Francisco font, it is a pretty nice alternative that seems to work pretty well for those who are using a non-Retina Display. If you want to bring back Lucida Grande, this Github repository has a handy script that will do that for you (some work colleagues of mine, designers mainly did it to bring back the old font): https://github.com/schreiberstein/lucidagrandeyosemite

doomlaser• 12 years ago

The trend of using ultrathin fonts everywhere will be short-lived and date interfaces quickly. It's a trend inspired totally by the mere fact that high dpi displays can render them without pixelated artifacts, and not because they make sense for design or readability on a fundamental level.

Thin weight type has uses in good design, but the way it's being applied ad nauseum today is a gimmick.

cmelbye2• 12 years ago

iOS hasn't used ultrathin Helvetica since its early betas, and I'm not aware of anywhere substantial in Yosemite that uses ultrathin. I believe mostly everything is regular Helvetica.

DiggityDug7• 12 years ago

Modern fonts have been frequently thin before the invention of retina screens.

The overuse of thin fonts might look dated in the future, but I don't agree that this trend is totally inspired by retina screens. If anything, I think Serif fonts have seen the greatest resurgence on web due to Retina screens. High DPI screens will impact our perception of all fonts, just as sans serif grew in popularity on lower dpi screens causing their perception to be more modern and technological.

In general typography as a whole has become much more interesting on retina screens. So yes, fonts look better now than ever before so don't cheat by using superthin because its trendy.

pi-err• 12 years ago

The screenshots on github use the thin variant of San Francisco - the equivalent to the current Helvetica Neue would be regular San Francisco. I also suspect they use the "Display" instead of "Text" version, which makes the kerning look strange.

San Francisco seems to work best at (very) small sizes, where Helvetica breaks. It proves further that Apple thinks of each screen size as a distinct UI - clearly the biggest difference with Google's approach to UI. Off topic: the 2 screen sizes for Watch show they don't want accidental developers for this platform, only fully committed ones.

I do find Helvetica works better on my Mac screen than SF (I tested in Mail.app).

jmartinpetersen• 12 years ago

This reminds me of Computer Modern (the companion default font for TeX) and what is wrong with it. It's even a reasonable explanation of why it is that way - new technology.

vl• 12 years ago

Yosemite is clearly first version fully optimized for Retina, potentially at expense of non-retina users. Every time I unlock my MacBook Pro I think "wow, this is gorgeous" (I have another one at work not updated to Yosemite, so I see difference every day). Unlike controversial iOS 7 update, Yosemite clearly looks better than the predecessor.

nodata2• 12 years ago

But very time I open my Air, I think "oh god what have they done".

_dps• 12 years ago

Does anyone know the licensing status of the TTFs?

dshankar• 12 years ago

Apple's TOS specifically states they should only be used for development of Watch apps.

Distributing it on Github & using it for non-development purposes (i.e. as a system font) is probably against the TOS, but not sure Apple will care enough to do anything about it.

bbx• 12 years ago

Typeface designer Tobias Frere-Jones' opinion about Helvetica in Yosemite: http://www.fastcodesign.com/3031432/why-apples-new-font-wont...

It echoes Erik Spiekermann's view as well: Helvetica wasn't designed for small sizes on screen.

http://spiekermann.com/en/helvetica-sucks/

gohrt• 12 years ago

The FastCo blog article, the one what derides the uselessly thin font, is published in an unreadably thin set of fonts.

yincrash• 12 years ago

Isn't this against the license for the font? I thought that it was explicitly for the use of designing apple watch ui.

billyhoffman• 12 years ago

Uhhh yeah. This "project" is basically a binary blob of Apple's new San Francisco font and a script to hack it into OS X's font system. This is totally illegal in the United States.

hit8run• 12 years ago

I don't know what some designers today have with these ultra thin fonts. One can use thin font variants but only together with big font-sizes.

Form follows function => Font Function = legibility => don't use too thin fonts in smaller sizes.

mfkp• 12 years ago

Looks like a straight up knockoff of Google's Roboto font: https://twitter.com/jm_denis/status/534802341770186752

Only big difference I can see is the 'Q'.

mortenjorck2• 12 years ago

Only if Backbone is a knockoff of Ember.

A better comparison would be to say that they both fall into the same typographic category; they are both humanist sans families with a bit of geometric rigidity; both have been compared to the classic DIN type.

That overlay isn't particularly useful; it only shows that the two families have comparable metrics and tend to follow the letterform patterns common to the category. A better visualization would be a closeup overlay of some characteristic letters, or a pangram set in each.

bluthru• 12 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIN_1451

sammularczyk2• 12 years ago

At first glance, they look very similar. However, in use there's a big difference between the two.

San Francisco is squarer which makes its x-height seem higher. The minor variations in lettering make a massive difference when used in application.

100% not a knockoff of Roboto. They're really, really different.

nwienert• 12 years ago

In chrome 38 it messes up tabs text (they are set too low)

mortenjorck2• 12 years ago

Eventually, I think it's quite likely that Apple will adopt San Francisco across all its operating systems, but that will only happen after a lot more behind-the-scenes typographic tweaking. It may look good enough as a drop-in replacement right now, but everything from stroke widths and hinting for non-retina displays to kerning tables and metrics within the interface will get some attention before anything other than the watch ships with these fonts.

fabrika• 12 years ago

The font looks really fresh but it only has Latin glyphs, hopefully they will add Cyrillic and Asian range this winter.

LastZactionHero• 12 years ago

After looking over the Yosemite change logs, as a non-iPhone user, it looks like a new font was all I had to look forward to. Every other update seems to concern sharing content between the desktop and iOS devices.

And now I'm finding out this new font- my only real reason for a 5GB update- is so unpopular that a hack to replace it is front page on HN.

X-Istence• 12 years ago

There is a lot more to Yosemite than just a font change.

1. Calendar/Contacts are cleaned up further from what they used to be.

2. The little green button no longer leaves you wondering what it does, it simply full screens now on a single monitor

3. There seems to be better consistency across many different applications when it comes to look and feel, and all of the partial see-through/blurriness actually feels pretty nice and gives interfaces a little more depth.

4. Improved Safari with a new JIT JavaScript engine that makes the web definitely feel faster

5. iCloud Drive integration, which is nice if you have multiple Macs

6. Spotlight has been massively improved, and is close to replacing Quicksilver for me.

The Apple Watch SDK was released today, and people are falling in love with the new font that was released, this hack simply replaces Helvetica Neue with that new font, there is no requirement for you to do so, and I personally won't be replacing my existing font with the one linked here.

72deluxe6• 12 years ago

Issue 2 you mention is an issue for me. If I am in Safari or Xcode and click that green blob, I get a full screen window. Now, what if I want to use Calculator to calculate something related to the webpage or code I am viewing? I use cmd-space to open Spotlight and type "calculator" and press Enter. Now, I get a calculator but on an entirely different desktop because fullscreen apps and non-fullscreen apps cannot share the same desktop space. It's STUPID.

I know you can hold down alt or whatever to make it behave like it used to, but I wish they'd put an option in to make it behave like it used to as the DEFAULT.

fredsted• 12 years ago

I was actually saddened when I saw people starting with their patches forcing Lucida back in OS X 10.10.

Helvetica was one of the things that made the iPhone so great.

Helvetica is neutral, timeless and easy to read. It's the perfect user interface font, especially the UI-optimized version OS X 10.10 is using.

As always, people just hate change.

That said, San Fransisco is a cool font, it just looks horrible as a computer font: too much space, and it's almost like all the characters look the same. But for a small device like a watch it's perfect.

exogen• 12 years ago

it's almost like all the characters look the same.

Interesting you say that, but prefer Helvetica. Quote from Erik Spiekermann in the film Helvetica: "Because all the letters...it's the whole Swiss ideology; the guy who designed it tried to make all the letters look the same."

54mf• 12 years ago

"Helvetica is neutral, timeless and easy to read."

Not according to typographers. :)

http://gizmodo.com/designers-explain-why-apples-new-os-x-typ...

h3xe• 12 years ago

So, Apple dedicate a cohort of designers to revitalize UI and what people do in return? They ruin all this by replacing system font with one from a goddamn 40mm watch.

Disgraceful.

As much as I don't like Yosemite (they really broke Spotlight), its UI is much better than that of previous versions.

72deluxe6• 12 years ago

Does anyone here have a "low res" (like 1440x900) MacBook? I do - it's from 2012 and was the last to have a CD drive so that I could write CDs for bandmates, plus it has a dedicated Ethernet port instead of a mass of external adapters (useful for AVB testing).

Anyway, since Yosemite the font for the menu bar has been a bit "bitty" and not smooth which contrasts sharply with the rest of the shininess seen everywhere - does this resolve this? I thought I'd ask before taking the plunge.

sammularczyk2• 12 years ago

I just installed it on my Air, and it seems a lot smoother than Helvetica ever was. YMMV though

lcmatt• 12 years ago

2010 model (1280x800) here and the menu bar / general font looks fine for me.

Here's the bar for me: http://i.imgur.com/oKnD674.png

emillon• 12 years ago

You must be a registered Apple Developer to use these fonts. Do not download if you don't have a paid Apple Developer Program account.

I presume that this is against github's TOS.

tempodox• 12 years ago

Almost nice, but the digit glyphs are destroyed: they're not equally wide any more. Sorry, but can't use a font like that.

andy_ppp• 12 years ago

Good god, I've installed it and what a mistake! The weight of the font seems to be very variable and the spacing between letters i s m a s s i v e.

Uninstall sadly :-(

nnq• 12 years ago

Am I the only one that thinks Segoe fonts from MS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segoe) would look much better than this for the original use (Apple Watch)?

San Francisco system font replacement for Yosemite

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