How do I use the new San Francisco font in notes, mail, Pages, etc.?

The note made earlier in this topic that the San Francisco fonts are specifically designed for the screen is wrong. The entire SF set are standard Postscript OpenType fonts. The same as any other such font. The reason you can't use them is what has also already been mentioned. They are intentionally blocked. All of the fonts are labeled as System Font, such as in this UltraLight version.

The OS is simply hiding anything with System Font as part of the internal names. That they are seen anywhere at all (such as in Mail), would be a mistake made by the person writing the code for that app.

The set exists as display parity to iOS, which has been using San Francisco for a while. I don't recall which version of iOS it debuted in, but I think iOS 7.

Tom Gewecke made an excellent point. If you were allowed to use it in an email, anyone running Yosemite or earlier, or using Windows, would not see that font. It would have to be substituted.

I also can't agree more with other statements about using it at all. It is only sightly different from Helvetica, Arial and other sans serif fonts you already can access. I don't get why folks think this font is so much better.

Currently the San Francisco font is the system font for all Apple devices (Mac, iPhone/iPad, Apple Watch, etc.) and Apple recommends developers use the system font in their apps. There are now display and text variations so printing will look great at all sizes.

However, this font won't show up in the font panel when selecting a font because it has a period in the beginning of the name. If you want to use it in the font panel, you can download it here and install yourself by dragging into /Library/Fonts/ or ~/Library/Fonts:

https://developer.apple.com/fonts/

Unfortunately, the font is restricted by Apple license agreement for UI mockups and prototyping so the legality of doing this is murky. However, it is a great font for applications and actually has many great features that are exposed in the font panel 'Typography' pane. Apple should really make this more available for users.

Also, for developers, I'll give a plug for my library to make it easy to use the special SF font features in your app:

https://github.com/djfitz/SFFontFeatures

Cheers!

Have the same issue. Can't find the font in for instance TextEdit... The font should appear with the name "San Francisco" I guess ;-)

cjboog wrote:

...I also searched the computer for "system font regular" and you can see there are some results that pop up under fonts called "SFNS Text" but again this font doesn't show up as on option in Pages, Mail, Notes, etc...

Try looking for SF UI Text. It's listed in the Font list in TextEdit.

I Don't have that font either, and I don't think it is present by default. Lots of people have been looking for it all day .

My understanding is that San Francisco isn't available on purpose. It was specifically designed for screens, so Apple wants to keep people from using it for documents that will potentially be printed. But a bigger reason is that, since it's their new custom designed proprietary system font, they likely don't want to give access to the actual Font Book data so it doesn't get out into the wild.

wanghuskahn wrote:

My understanding is that San Francisco isn't available on purpose. It was specifically designed for screens, so Apple wants to keep people from using it for documents that will potentially be printed.

Also if San Francisco were used in email or any digital document (except pdf), no machines other than those running the latest Apple OS versions would be able to display it -- instead they have to substitute something else.

You can download the San Francisco fonts from Apple's developer site here: https://developer.apple.com/fonts/

They're called "SF UI Display" and "SF UI Text." There are restrictions on how you're allowed to use them - so pay attention to the terms.

For those who don't read the terms and conditions, this is an important one...

"IMPORTANT NOTE: THE APPLE SAN FRANCISCO FONT IS TO BE USED SOLELY FOR CREATING MOCK-UPS OF USER INTERFACES TO BE USED IN SOFTWARE PRODUCTS RUNNING ON APPLE’S iOS OR OS X OPERATING SYSTEMS, AS APPLICABLE."

Best not to use it 🙂

Hey, I found this link with a repo of the font - may this helps you in the meantime. I didnt use it yet, as it is not urgent: http://goo.gl/nCDJin

It doesn't really make sense that it is not available for use as they tout "use San Francisco fonts in your documents!".