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I'm doing all graphic design in a startup company of some friends, and a major part of our product is developing an app that should run on everything after iPhone 4. So after some researching (I have basically zero UI design experience) I figured we should use the San Francisco font for the app.

If I understand correctly Apple allows using the font for development purposes. However the official source only has an iOS version, and I'm a Windows user, which means I can't use it.

I managed to get the font from other sources, installed it, but it doesn't appear in either PS or AI. I also installed it on a different PC with a different Adobe CS version but that didn't work either.

I'm considering using Helvetica Neue instead, but it would be great if we could use San Francisco.

What options do I have?

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  • So close. I'm not sure if we should use "SF Pro Rounded", "SF Pro Display" or "SF Pro Text". It all seems to work except in the clock, the colon is a box in the taskbar
    – Shamoon
    Commented Jun 12, 2019 at 22:05

4 Answers 4

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You go here: https://developer.apple.com/fonts/ (yes I know this is the official link - thing is: SF is a open type font, its just "hidden" deep in the downloaded package)

Then you download the font.

Then open the downloaded zip with 7zip. do all the following steps with 7zip:

  1. open the folder SFPro
  2. open the San Francisco Pro.pkg
  3. open the file Payload~
  4. open the folder .
  5. open the folder Library
  6. open the folder Fonts

Here are all the fonts you need. BUT, for some reason, at least in my case, if I install the italics I can not choose the regular font in an application. I don't know why and haven't tried anything like renaming or such because I just found all of this. Which is thy I have not installed the italics at the moment. But the rest works just fine.

Hope this helps.

EDIT: With the converter, which @Tanno shared, I converted the font into .ttf and it all works now.

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  • 6
    Yes I know. Try it the way I described it. It worked for me on Windows.
    – mpt
    Commented Jun 23, 2017 at 19:22
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    The font files are just "hidden" deep within the zip/pgk. But are very easy to extract and are just normal open type fonts and therefore work on windows just fine.
    – mpt
    Commented Jun 23, 2017 at 19:29
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    I laughed for 10 seconds on how simple it was and how we give up thinking "it's not for Windows." A font is a font people. Follow this method and convert to .ttf if necessary.
    – Abhimanyu
    Commented Jan 4, 2018 at 19:41
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    Fonts are now being downloaded in Apple Disk Image (.dmg) extension, what to do now?
    – Hamza Khanzada
    Commented Apr 21, 2020 at 5:06
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    @Abhimanyu Technically speaking, fonts are executable software code (they are not "just" a collection of vector glyphs), the fact that OTF is cross-platform is a small miracle in itself. Look back at the history of fonts on Windows and Mac OS (and Adobe's Type 1/Type3 fonts and ATM) and you'll appreciate how good things are today.
    – Dai
    Commented Jun 21, 2020 at 10:14
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Step 1: Download the font package from Apple.

https://developer.apple.com/fonts/

enter image description here

Make sure to download the regular fonts and not the compact fonts for watchOS. The download will have an annoying .pkg file that Windows users will be unable to open immediately. That’s okay.

Step 2: Download and install 7zip

http://www.7-zip.org/download.html

This will allow you to dig into the .pkg file and navigate to the font files.

Step 3: Open the .pkg file using 7zip.

The fonts will be found by navigating to San Francisco Pro.pkg > Payload > Payload > . > Library > Fonts

Select all of the font files and click the “Extract” button in the top navigation of 7zip. Once extracted you can install the fonts like any other Windows font.

enter image description here

Source

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  • How do I actually change the Windows System font?
    – Shamoon
    Commented Jun 12, 2019 at 21:47
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Unfortunately Apple aren't too concerned with Windows users. They expect everyone who is designing for Mac to use a Mac. And since the San Francisco font has been created with specific features only available for Mac it is only available on Mac and unlikely to be available on Windows any time soon (unless someone decides to hack it, which is a possibility).

Since San Francisco is very similar to Helvetica Neue (can you tell the difference?) you are probably fine to just use that instead, although San Francisco is more condensed.

A comparison of San Francisco and similar fonts:

San Francisco comparisons

As you can see, San Francisco is very similar to Helvetica in shape, but possibly closer to Roboto in proportions and FF DIN in weight... Wether any of that matters much to you is obviously up to you. Personally I'd just stick with Helvetica.

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    This is not correct. Font can be extracted from a .dmg file using 7zip and installed on Windows.
    – Edi Budimilic
    Commented Jun 15, 2020 at 23:06
  • Use the context menu > 7ZIP > Open Archive... works perfectly
    – MiBol
    Commented Dec 29, 2021 at 16:51
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I'm resurrecting this from the death, because I think I have the answer.

I ended up downloading the font here, and proceeded to convert all the fonts to TTF format using this converter. This has worked great for me.

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  • This. Worked. Great.
    – FET
    Commented Jun 12, 2018 at 16:55
  • It seems to make a ton of different zip files for each font. Any way to get them all as a list?
    – Shamoon
    Commented Jun 12, 2019 at 21:34

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