Apple currently uses the San Francisco font family as its system font across all its platforms, including iOS, macOS, watchOS, tvOS, and visionOS. The main variant for macOS, iOS, and iPadOS is called SF Pro. This neutral, flexible sans-serif typeface is designed for optimal legibility and versatility, featuring nine weights, variable optical sizes, four widths, and a rounded variant. It supports over 150 languages across Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts
. Historically, Apple used several other fonts:
- Apple Garamond (a custom condensed Garamond) was the corporate font from 1984 until about 2001, used heavily in branding and marketing
- Chicago was used for the early Macintosh interface.
- Lucida Grande was the primary system font for macOS from 2001 to 2014.
- Helvetica Neue replaced Lucida Grande briefly from 2014 to 2015 but was criticized for legibility issues on smaller screens, prompting the switch to San Francisco
San Francisco was introduced in 2015, initially for the Apple Watch as SF Compact , and then expanded to all Apple devices as SF Pro. It was designed in-house by Apple to improve readability and unify typography across devices of varying screen sizes
. In summary, the font Apple uses today is San Francisco, specifically the SF Pro variant for most devices, reflecting Apple’s focus on clarity, consistency, and user experience in its typography
