Can Yosemite system font be changed?

I share the dislike for the font change and the general minimalistic direction Apple has taken which reduces readability, usability, etc by going with narrower fonts, over reliance on grey tones, removing color, removing details, smaller icons, etc.

It is especially tough for those who were perfectly happy with previous versions of iOS & OS X and in order to get a few new features, now suddenly find themselves needing to make accessibility adjustments overnight after upgrading to iOS 7/8 & Yosemite.

None of us are getting any younger. We spend too much time on electronic screens already. No need for Apple to make it more strenuous.

I hope everybody has been sending some feedback to Apple. If not please do via https://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

Only with enough feedback will they add options and just maybe reconsider a few of their choices.

ShadowDancer1000 wrote:

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Apple released this as a pre-test Beta and I cannot believe people, especially those in the Art & Design community, didn't speak up about this issue.

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Obviously I can't say much, but I can say that there were MANY complaints during the betas, and these are ongoing.

ShadowDancer1000 wrote:

I use Tinker Tool, but unfortunately it doesn't address the problem of system wide font scalability or improving legibility.

Actually I have no clue what TT does anymore as it relates to its font settings.

I haven't seen it yield any results since the days of Snow Leopard.

****. Just downloaded it. Oh well, I'll give it a whirl anyway.

Yeah, have sent messages as a user, and as a beta tester. No sign of any change.

I have for now (and possibly for good) had to reduce my screen's resolution from 1920 x 1080, to 1600x1000 (its a Dell screen, U2410). It makes the use of Yosemite tolerable. But its an incredible annoyance, losing the higher res for my photography, and everything seems a little blurry.

My eyes are nowhere close to 20/20 and with my diabetes, can even change from day to day, so having an OS thats consistently CLEAR is absolutely essential. Still contemplating downgrading. I find I have zero use for many of Yosemite's new "features".

- reply meant to go to shadow dancer, seconding what you said kyte, my apologies -

I used Feedback Assistant extensively to report a variety of UI problems, with screen shots included in some cases of prior OS X versions to undeniably prove what is easier to read, select, etc.

Unfortunately, while Apple sometimes incorporated detailed feedback and fixes soon after an issue is raised; recently it seems to be a bit of one direction with their hands over their ears; that whatever is going on needs to fit a certain style at all cost.

One thing that has bugged me personally is how everything had to become bland, b/w/grey, less detailed, round, super bright two tone icons, etc over the past couple years; as of iOS7 let's say ... which absolutely does not appeal to me and made no sense to me why Apple would go that route. Until you then suddenly the iWatch, with the same icons (which I hate in larger size) miniaturized on the two inch interface. Then you sit back, connect two dots and figure all right they're doing this for some consistency's sake across the product line. Whatever goes on the smallest device dictates now how it is going to look on my 24" screen.

Anyway. I think plenty of feedback has been given to Apple during the beta period with regards to fonts, icons, contrast, etc ; but so far it has fallen on deaf ears.

No apology needed, icerabbit. I'm pretty much over beta testing, myself. I only joined in at the beginning of the current but the font thing was my bugbear and when I made comment, was told that many many others had complained. I would say without a doubt, that Apple has no intention of changing what they have done, and those of us with visual deficits can go fly a kite. So to speak.

Fortunately I have 20/20 corrected vision and excellent detail acuity. But none of us are getting any younger and neither are our eyes, and so it is doubly painful that while all of us spend too much time staring at computer monitors, tablets and phones; Apple is making it more difficult for us to their systems across the board. I really don't think I should be meddling with accessibility options to not get eye strain at my age; but I have to with iOS 7 8 & Yosemite.

And I agree with you that Apple is probably not going to back off or divert from this new UI vision they have or whatever they're working towards. All I can hope is that with enough feedback, they'll introduce some extra options. Which unfortunately typically means waiting for the next OS so it can be a "feature". Sigh.

Thanks for starting this thread! I'm in shock and full of dismay. I am so sorry I clicked yes to the update. I find this hideous and unfriendly with the lack of customizations -- no options to change! and why? I've owned a Mac since 1990 and this is just so heartbreakingly ugly and dismaying. I have sent my

unhappy and angry feed back to Mac.

I downloaded the patch for Lucida Grande --but my Mac won't let me install it. sigh sigh sigh

I finally caved in to my need for usability and reinstalled Mavericks as my main OS. I cloned my Yosemite install to an external drive ahead of reverting to Mavericks, and boot up with that once a week to go in to the seed forums to see if theres something changed which might make me want to switch back, but so far nothing. Actually, today is my "boot from Yosemite" day, so I better get on with it.

I also need to change the font for my mother because she can't read anything. But she's not an advanced enough user to manage anything if I take some of the suggestions and then an update modifies it. She just got her new computer and we are trying to figure out what to do. I've done what I can with accessibility but she's still having a lot of trouble. Hoping an easy fix will come soon as I'm not sure I want to do anything to her machine she won't be able to manage.

I agree with most here. I wanted to add a comment so that not only will I get updates on what is said but I wanted to also leave a few ideas for some people if they come across this thread.

First if you would like to send Apple feedback on this you can do so here: https://www.apple.com/feedback/macosx.html

Second For some people Scaling the display might help

To scale the display:

System Preferences > Displays > Display ( Tab ) > Change Resolution: To Scaled > Select Larger Text.

Hope that helps,

Weston

Decrease the display's resolution, if you can't use the change System font suggestion I linked to earlier.

Yeah, I found the eyestrain issues (fonts, undifferenitated colors, brightness of the grays) to be so bad (even using F.Lux) on my 13" rMBP that I downgraded to Mavericks. Hopefully, the next release of OSX will be better in this regard (since I've seen a lot of complaints).

https://github.com/jenskutilek/FiraSystemFontReplacement I did this and it worked out well for me

I've tried that script (running OS X 10.10.5) but it only works for the Finder bar. Not even for the contextual menu and not for all the (Apple) apps you run. So form Safari to Creative Cloud, they still show the ugly Helvetica with this script. Anyone else got better results? Please tell us!