Apple Releases 'SF Symbols 5' With Expressive Animations, Over 700 New Symbols, More

Apple has released 'SF Symbols 5', featuring expressive animations, over 700 new symbols, and enhanced tools for custom symbols.

With over 5,000 symbols, SF Symbols is a library of iconography designed to integrate seamlessly with San Francisco, the system font for Apple platforms. Symbols come in nine weights and three scales, and automatically align with text. They can be exported and edited using vector graphics editing tools to create custom symbols with shared design characteristics and accessibility features.




Here's a look at what's new...

Symbol animations

A collection of configurable animations provide a new dimension of expression across the entire symbol library. Choreographed behaviors such as appear, bounce, scale, pulse, and more define how symbols and their layers move. These animated effects and transitions bring vitality to interfaces and provide feedback to user input while communicating changes in status and ongoing activity.

Drawn for motion

Symbols have been redrawn and optimized for motion with layers that move in response to animation effects. A new layer structure with enhanced annotation defines both the visual appearance of the symbol and how it moves.

Over 700 new symbols

New symbols include automotive indicators, game controller buttons, additional weather conditions, currencies, and more. New localized symbols include variants across Arabic, Chinese, Devanagari, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, Latin, and Thai. These new symbols are available in apps running iOS 17, iPadOS 17, macOS Sonoma, tvOS 17, and watchOS 10.

Enhanced tools for custom symbols

Creating custom symbols is faster and easier with symbol components: a library of enclosure shapes, badges, and slashes that can be added to custom symbols. Updated annotation tools and a new inspector enable animation previews for both system and custom symbols.

Developers can download SF Symbols 5 from the link below. Note that the dev site still has the download link labeled as beta, but the once installed, you'll notice the app name change from 'SF Symbols beta' to 'SF Symbols' with a version number of 5.0 and a build number of 91.

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