Menlo (typeface)

Menlo

Category	Sans-serif
Classification	Monospace
Designer(s)	Jim Lyles
Foundry	Apple Inc.

Menlo is a monospaced sans-serif typeface designed by Jim Lyles. The face first shipped with Mac OS X Snow Leopard. Menlo is based upon the Open Source font Bitstream Vera and the public domain font Deja Vu.

Replacement

There are indications that Menlo may soon be replaced as the system monospaced font: in macOS 10.11, a new Apple-made monospaced font appeared within Terminal.app, hidden inside the Resources folder – "SF Mono", a monospaced variant of the San Francisco family of fonts that Apple has created as part of its corporate identity. It is not installed as a user-accessible typeface by default, although it is included with and used by Xcode. Even if it is installed by the user, SF Mono's license agreement is extraordinarily restrictive; it limits use of the font "solely in conjunction with Apple-branded applications", and it is not allowed to be embedded anywhere. Any other use of the typeface requires written consent from Apple.

As of macOS 10.12.4, the user still cannot install or use SF Mono unless it is copied out of the Resources folder. Apple has however begun to use it on the Apple Developer website; the version used there is slightly newer than the one that ships with macOS.

See also

• Apple typography
• Monaco (typeface)

External links

• "Apple "Menlo" font..." Typophile forum discussion about introduction of Menlo. June 2009.
• Dr. Drang (2009-10-27). "The compleat Menlo/Vera Sans comparison".
• fnurl (2011-06-22). "Comparison: Bitstream vs DejaVu vs Menlo".