San Francisco (sans-serif typeface) San Francisco (sans-serif typeface) San Francisco is a neo-grotesque sans-serif 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 20 years and has been inspired by Helvetica and FF DIN. The San Francisco typeface has four variants: "SF" (or "SF UI") for macOS, iOS, and tvOS; "SF Compact" for watchOS; "SF Mono" (based on SF Compact) for the Xcode application; and "SF Serif" for Apple Books. The main difference is that the sides of letters with round shapes, such as "o", "e", and
Helvetica add subtle differences. Substitute Helvetica designs that have survived into or originated during the digital period have included Monotype's Arial, Compugraphic's CG Triumvirate, ParaType's Pragmatica, Bitstream's Swiss 721, URW++'s Nimbus Sans and Scangraphic's Europa Grotesk. Berthold itself responded to Helvetica's popularity with Akzidenz-Grotesk Buch, effectively a Helvetica clone. Besides Helvetica imitations, Helvetica was available in custom derivatives with unusual special-order characters for many years, notably a straight-legged 'R' and round-topped 'A'. CNN uses a custom derivative, "CNN Sans", which has a '1' with a base. URW (later URW++) under the leadership of Peter Karow produced a modification of Helvetica called