Possible to install the typeface that’s included in Glyphs?

I am making editable screen shots with help of @FlorianPircher script (Thanks!).

I would love to continue editing the text after I’ve opened up the screen shot in Illustrator, so I can change font, colors etc, but it becomes very hard since I don’t have the font that Glyphs uses, so half of the text gets converted to outlines and some of the text stays editable.

Anyone have some thoughts on how to make this work? Can I “steal” the font that Glyphs uses and install on my computer to avoid this? Or can I temporary use another font in Glyphs (which I have installed) when making the screenshot?

Thanks in advance for any help!

You can download the SF fonts here

Note its restrictive licensing terms.

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Can you show the font that you mean?

The SFNS … is the system font from macOS. It is not available in most apps but you can download a special version from Apple for design purposes.

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But is really the standard San Fransisco, seems like a Variable font?

Do you know where?

SF is a variable font. If you downloaded SF Pro from the link above, you will find the variable font installed at

/Library/Fonts/SF-Pro.ttf

The problem is that Illustrator still doesn’t feel that these are the same fonts, so half of the text gets converted to outlines. Well, well. I can re-type everything, not a big thing really, was just hoping it could work more smooth :slight_smile:

They are strictly speaking not the same fonts. The real SF fonts that the Mac uses are located at

/System/Library/Fonts/SFNS.ttf

However, this is a font specifically designed to work with the OS and not be installed like a regular font. Which is why you see these strange font names like

.SFNS-Regular_wdth_opsz110000_GRAD_wght

The OS is creating static instances and giving them these cryptic names. All of this is internal to the OS and I would not expect apps like AI to understand any of this. Nor should they.

When I made the screenshots for the Glyphs Handbook using these scripts, I opened them in Affinity Designer where I had better luck opening the PDF with real text and then manually assigning the SF fonts from the Apple Developer downloads page.

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Oh, that’s a great advice, I’ll try that out. I wish there was an option in Illustrator to NOT convert text, but can not find anything like that.

WORKED with a 30-days Affinity Trial! Thanks.

Note that Affinity Designer will not pick up on the OpenType features used. For example, the screenshot you posted has the “High Legibility” style set enabled. You can re-enable this feature manually, if you want:

I will change everything, just need the editable texts. Thanks!