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
Sans-serif create rational, almost neutral typefaces. In 1957 the release of Helvetica, Univers, and Folio, the first typefaces categorized as neo-grotesque, had a strong impact internationally: Helvetica came to be the most used typeface for the following decades. Other, later neo-grotesques include Unica, Imago and Rail Alphabet, and in the digital period Acumin, San Francisco and Roboto. As their name suggests, Geometric sans-serif typefaces are based on geometric shapes, like near-perfect circles and squares. Common features are a nearly-exactly circular capital "O" and a "single-story" lowercase letter "a". The 'M' is often splayed and the capitals of varying width, following the