The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
New York vs Source Serif 4
Two transitional serifs built to pair with a system sans. New York is Apple's companion to San Francisco, shipped on its platforms since 2019 and tuned to flip from reading face to display face across its optical sizes, while Source Serif 4 is Adobe's open-source companion to Source Sans, loosely based on the 18th-century forms of Pierre Simon Fournier.
New York is a commercial font, so it is shown here in Source Serif 4, its closest free alternative. All free alternatives to New York →
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
- New York is free to download but its license limits it to designing and developing software for Apple platforms, so it can't be embedded in a website or a non-Apple product; Source Serif 4 is under the SIL Open Font License and served by Google Fonts.
- New York ships as four optical sizes (Small, Medium, Large, Extra Large) in six weights, with Apple's system selecting the cut by point size on iOS 14 and later.
- Source Serif 4 is a single variable font with an optical-size axis from 8 to 60, a weight axis from 200 to 900, and matching italics, including Greek and Cyrillic italics.
- Frank Grießhammer's design keeps Fournier quirks like the bottom serif on the b, and its proportions and color are matched to Source Sans for mixed sans-and-serif typesetting.
New York
Reach for New York when you're designing a native iOS or macOS app and want a serif that the system already renders, sizes, and pairs with San Francisco for you.
Source Serif 4
Reach for Source Serif 4 for anything that leaves Apple's ecosystem — websites, print, cross-platform products — where you need an open license, a variable font, and a serif that sits naturally next to Source Sans.