
San Francisco system font replacement for Yosemite - siong1987
https://github.com/wellsriley/YosemiteSanFranciscoFont
======
DigitalSea
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](https://github.com/schreiberstein/lucidagrandeyosemite)

~~~
doomlaser
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.

~~~
DiggityDug7
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.

~~~
thegeomaster
Sans-serif typefaces were historically perceived as more modern than their
serif counterparts. The simplicity and lack of letterform "decorations" (which
serifs are) suggests a character of precision and rejection of legacy and "old
ways". This has been the case ever since Swiss designers started using
Helvetica and related typefaces set in clear, grid-based designs with modern
color choices. So the modern character of sans-serifs dates far before
computers and computer displays.

------
gojomo
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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_%28typeface%29)

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

~~~
flomo
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...](https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/58243/can-i-get-the-original-
mac-font-chicago-on-a-mountain-lion-mac)

------
bbx
Typeface designer Tobias Frere-Jones' opinion about Helvetica in Yosemite:
[http://www.fastcodesign.com/3031432/why-apples-new-font-
wont...](http://www.fastcodesign.com/3031432/why-apples-new-font-wont-work-on-
your-desktop)

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

[http://spiekermann.com/en/helvetica-
sucks/](http://spiekermann.com/en/helvetica-sucks/)

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

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

~~~
billyhoffman
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.

------
fredsted
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.

~~~
54mf
"Helvetica is neutral, timeless and easy to read."

Not according to typographers. :)

[http://gizmodo.com/designers-explain-why-apples-new-os-x-
typ...](http://gizmodo.com/designers-explain-why-apples-new-os-x-typeface-is-
a-str-1585123982)

------
mfkp
Looks like a straight up knockoff of Google's Roboto font:
[https://twitter.com/jm_denis/status/534802341770186752](https://twitter.com/jm_denis/status/534802341770186752)

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

~~~
mortenjorck
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.

------
mortenjorck
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.

------
_dps
Does anyone know the licensing status of the TTFs?

~~~
dshankar
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.

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

~~~
wellsosaurus
I think you might be able to do that with this:
[https://github.com/schreiberstein/lucidagrandeyosemite](https://github.com/schreiberstein/lucidagrandeyosemite)

~~~
m3andros
Thanks, mate! Made my day!

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

------
bherms
Noticing a few issues like so:

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/cl4to142icjw2ay/Screenshot%202014-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/cl4to142icjw2ay/Screenshot%202014-11-18%2017.20.20.png?dl=0)

~~~
wellsosaurus
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...](https://github.com/wellsriley/YosemiteSanFranciscoFont/issues/4)

------
72deluxe
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.

~~~
lcmatt
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](http://i.imgur.com/oKnD674.png)

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

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

------
hit8run
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.

------
emillon
> 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.

------
andy_ppp
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 :-(

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

------
oliv__
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.

~~~
TillE
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.

------
LastZactionHero
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
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.

~~~
72deluxe
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.

~~~
kalleboo
> Now, what if I want to use Calculator to calculate something related to the
> webpage or code I am viewing

Just type your equation straight into Spotlight and it'll give you the result
on-the-fly. Also works for unit and currency conversions.

~~~
72deluxe
Ah good plan. My main complaint is the breaking of "normal" window
functionality though, not specifically access to calculator - that was an
example.

But great idea nonetheless!

------
h3xe
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.

