What font is used in the default system menu bar?

[es183923]

Here is a video:

Screen.Recording.2022-05-17.at.2.50.29.PM.mov

See how the text doesn't move, and only one character moves at a time.

This font is not monospace looking, but it acts as monospace. I was wondering what font this was, so I could use it as my font too. (I realize this is kinda off-topic, but I don't know any better place to ask)

[FelixKratz]

I believe this is the San Francisco font family. In my bar I use the SF Pro font, which looks very similar: https://developer.apple.com/fonts/

[liangch]

I guess the open font feature tnum is used.
FYI. https://rsms.me/inter/#features/tnum

[es183923]

Yeah, that looks about right. Is it possible for tnum to be added to sketchybar somehow? Is it possible for the tnum feature to be implemented in sketchybar?

[FelixKratz]

Sure that would be possible, we would need to add the font attribute kCTFontFeatureSettingsAttribute and in the dictionary select the feature kMonospacedNumbersSelector when creating the font descriptor here:

SketchyBar/src/text.c

Line 34 in c5a9f96

CTFontDescriptorRef descriptor = CTFontDescriptorCreateWithAttributes(attributes);

We would have to discuss about how the actual font="..." syntax would need to be adapted for this, because there are many features and I would want to add more than this single one while doing the changes (e.g. ligatures).

[FelixKratz]

Further reading: https://developer.apple.com/fonts/TrueType-Reference-Manual/RM09/AppendixF.html, https://developer.apple.com/documentation/coretext/kctfontfeaturesettingsattribute for the implementation. If you want you can create an enhancement issue for this where we can condense all of this information and when I have some free time I will look if I can get it working, or someone creates a pr for this.

[liangch]

Found a workaround, have fun.

1. find the font you like and with open type feature to make num looks like mono. I use Inter font[1], which has open type feature tnum.
2. use OpenType Feature Freezer[2] to create a font which has this font feature enabled by default. Below command makes a new font InterT which has tnum enabled by default. -R means replacing name Inter in font with InterT.

   pyftfeatfreeze -f 'tnum' -R 'Inter/InterT' Inter.ttf InterT.ttf
   

3. use this new font in sketchybar (e.g. clock item).

Refereces:
[1]. Inter font https://rsms.me/inter/
[2]. https://github.com/twardoch/fonttools-opentype-feature-freezer