Changing the System Font on Yosemite
Update: A Step by Step Guide is now available.
Mac OS X comes with a new system font, Helvetica Neue.
Maybe it’s just me, but for such a new and modern interface, Helvetica Neue feels… ancient, and Helvetica is already everywhere…
A more futuristic font such as Avenir Next may be a better choice. After all, Avenir means future in French!
The System Font can be Changed
It has been found out that Mac OS X did not use vanilla Helvetica Neue for system UI font; it uses a special version of the font, .Helvetica Neue DeskInterface. I suspect that the dot in front the name hides that font from the font menu.
It has also been found that if you put a font with the same PostScript name as that of .Helvetica Neue DeskInterface in ~/Library/Fonts, Mac OS X will use that font instead.
For this reason, people created system font replacement packages, such as Lucida Grande and Fira for Yosemite.
Let’s Do It
I created a tool to patch the font to replace the system font. This involves steps such as:
- Adjusting the font’s metrics (scale, ascend, descent) to match the metrics of the system font.
- Changing the PostScript name.
This is possible because FontForge provides a Python scripting interface, thus making this easy.
Update: A Step by Step Guide is now available.
You can find the scripts below:
