How to Change the MacOS High Sierra System Font to Lucida Grande

How to Change the MacOS High Sierra System Font to Lucida Grande

Do you wish you had Lucida Grande as the system font in macOS High Sierra? Wish no more, its possible to easily change the system font away from San Francisco and to the fan favorite Lucida Grande again in macOS 10.13.

Some of you are probably confused so lets cover some quick background; Some Mac users may prefer the older Lucida Grande system font that existed on Mac OS for many years prior to the introduction of Yosemite, where it was changed to Helvetica Neue, and then again in El Capitan and onward where the system font changed again to San Francisco. The difference between the system fonts is subtle but noticeable in overall spacing and thickness, and some users may prefer one to the other.

If youre one of us who enjoys the easy-on-the-eyes Lucida Grande font and youre running macOS High Sierra, you can use a nice little tool to easily switch between those two system fonts on your Mac. System font readability is one of those topics that some users care greatly about, and others could not care any less about and wont even notice.

Obviously if you dont miss the older Lucida Grande system font then youre probably not the target audience for this particular tool. But if you do, its super easy to change in macOS High Sierra and this utility is a great little add-on. You should backup your Mac before using this utility. Its very unlikely something will go wrong, but if something does youll be glad you have made a fresh backup beforehand.

Also, its good practice to routinely back up your Mac anyway :-) Once you reboot you will find that Lucida Grande is the default system font everywhere, in menus, title bars, window bars, all system text will be switched over. For the most part the effects are flawless, but you may notice some curious font issues with groups of browser tabs and various apps, whether or not that is acceptable to you is your choice. If you decide youre not into Lucida Grande, you can easily change back to the High Sierra default system font of San Francisco again by relaunching the app and clicking the San Fransisco tab followed by clicking the green check button, and again rebooting the Mac. The change between Lucida Grande and San Francisco is fairly subtle.

Lucida Grande has larger spacing and is a bit thicker, making it easier on the eyes for some users, whereas San Francisco has tighter spacing and is thinner overall. Many users might not even notice the change. The animated GIF below shows San Francisco versus Lucida Grande in the Finder: For those who care about this sort of thing because they find Lucida Grande easier to read, you may appreciate some other tips to improve the readability of text and fonts on a Mac include , , and .

The latter option is less than ideal for many users because it reduces the screen resolution and available screen space on a Mac, but it does make things appear larger as a trade-off. The Mac does not have a bold fonts option (yet anyway), which is unfortunate, but such a feature does exist in the iOS world.

This tool is a revamped version with High Sierra support of something we have covered in the past , and has been a topic covered for and as well. So if you have an older MacOS version as well you can change the font there too if youd like, though its worth pointing out that the macOSLucidaGrande tool works with all modern versions of macOS that used San Francisco, including High Sierra, Sierra, and El Capitan.