San Francisco (also known as SF Pro) is a neo-grotesque typeface made by Apple Inc. It was first released to developers on November 18, 2014. It is the first new typeface designed at Apple in nearly twenty years and has been inspired by Helvetica and DIN.
The macOS Catalina font Galvji is similar to the San Francisco variant SF Pro Text but has lower leading and bigger spacing.
Variants
Note: SF has the codename SFNS in macOS and SFUI in iOS, regardless of the official name.
Stylistic fonts exist, which are mainly present in the iOS 16 Lock Screen, Apple Cash, watchOS Watch Faces, and several promotional materials. These include chiseled, stenciled, semi-rounded, dotted, prisma, railed, and slab-serif versions.
Some variants have two optical sizes: "display" for large and "text" for small text. Compared to display, the letters in text have larger apertures and more generous letter-spacing. The operating system automatically chooses the display optical size for sizes of at least 20 points, and the text optical size otherwise. Variable grades were eventually added in newer versions.
SF Pro/SF UI
UI font for macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and tvOS. In 2017, a revised version, SF Pro was introduced, supporting an expanded list of weights, optical sizes, glyphs and languages. SF Pro Rounded (codename SFUIRounded) was introduced in 2018. SF Pro Text comes with 9 weights with their italics. Initially had only 6 weights when introduced. SF Pro Display comes with 9 weights with their italics. SF Pro Rounded comes with 9 weights. It has the same figure as the "display" version but with rounded corners. These fonts, for use in different languages, can be found on the Apple website in their corresponding regions of use as variations of SF Pro: SF Pro AR is an Arabic font; SF Pro JP is a Japanese font. SF Pro KR is a Korean font, and SF Pro TH is a Thai font. SF Pro SC, SF Pro TC and SF Pro HK are Chinese fonts; they are labeled as the PingFang family.
SF Pro is a variable font that also has variable widths in conjunction with weights, optical sizes, and grades. One of them is a print-optimized variant, SF Hello exists, which is restricted to Apple employees and permitted contractors and vendors, and is therefore unavailable for public use. This results in three fonts derived from SF Pro as shown below;
SF Condensed
A condensed variant of SF Pro. SF Condensed Text has 6 weights. SF Condensed Display has 9 weights. Variants are internally named SF Cash, SF Shields, and SF Condensed Photos, but those are all offshoots from the same font.
SF Compressed
A compressed variant of SF Pro. Different from SF Condensed, vertical edges are fully straight, and its kerning is much closer.
SF Expanded
Internally called SF Wide, it is an expanded variant of SF Pro.
SF Compact
Initial font introduced with the Apple Watch and watchOS, but was later rebranded as SF Compact with the introduction of SF UI at WWDC 2015. Different from SF Pro, its characters' round curves are flatter, allowing the letters to be laid out with more space between them, thereby making the text more legible at small sizes, which Apple Watch small screen demands. SF Compact Rounded was introduced in 2016. SF Compact Text comes with 9 weights with their italics. Initially had only 6 weights when introduced. SF Compact Display comes with 9 weights with their italics. SF Compact Rounded comes with 9 weights. It has the same figure as the "display" version but with rounded corners.
SF Mono
A monospaced variant. UI font for the Terminal, Console, and Xcode applications. It was introduced at WWDC 2016. SF Mono comes with 6 weights with their italics.
SF Camera
Introduced on September 10, 2019 at Apple's keynote; Phil Schiller mentioned it while summarizing the camera updates on iPhone 11 Pro. Different from SF Pro, this variant has a boxier design which gives an industrial and professional look. Its figure and tracking are similar to SF Compact Text.